C-Class Estate debuts at Mercedes-Benz Bremen facility

Ryan Joseph Ramos May 22, 2014

The Mercedes-Benz C-Class ranks have just been bolstered by the new Estate variant, with this wagon model debuting at the automaker’s Bremen, Germany facility, which is so far the only plant to be producing this particular model on top of the sedan and coupe variants.

Apart from the official debut of the C-Class Estate, this presentation also seeks to showcase the German luxury car company’s commitment to automotive manufacturing ops in Germany. While the company has been expanding its operations across the globe in order to streamline supply processes in various markets, German plants such as Bremen no doubt are still at the forefront of the company’s production capabilities.

“We are proud to be the exclusive producers of the C-Class estate here at our plant,” said Bremen plant chief Andreas Kellermann. “By comparison to the predecessor model, we’ve made a huge leap in terms of design, quality, and innovative technologies.”

A whopping €2 billion total in investment this year and in 2015 will make sure that the Bremen plant will be able to be the center of competence for the C-Class, arguably the most important model series for Mercedes-Benz because of its high volume of sales all over the world.

Part of the improvements to the plant include new production technologies developed mainly to set new standards when it comes to automotive production. For one, an innovative new aluminum-hybrid construction process developed to allow steel and aluminum to be joined together (dubbed the ImpAct joining process) provides the necessary body construction that makes the C-Class Estate stable and lightweight at the same time.

The Bremen plant has been in service since 1938, and it currently has over 12,700 employees. That makes it the largest private employer in the region, and allows it to produce eight Mercedes-Benz models, including three C-Class variants: sedan, estate wagon, and coupe. Around 300,000 units were produced in total at the Bremen plant last year.