Rumor: Mercedes to Debut New S-Class in China?

There’s no question that China has emerged as a major market for luxury cars in the past few years with German car brands surging in popularity. Mercedes trails BMW and Audi in sales, but they’re still growing. In fact, they’re expanding their dealership network from 217 stores to 260 across the country.

The chances that that’ll be the case though, are pretty slim. Car show season is starting soon, and Beijing takes places closer towards the end than the start. The S-Class has been undergoing testing for quite a while now, and is likely closing in on production ready status. While they could wait until 2013, there’s no reason for them to wait out the whole season.

Then again, it’s not as though there aren’t other cars that Mercedes could show-off in the time in between. There’s the CLC, the CLA, the GLA, and all the rest of Mercedes small car offerings that have yet to see the light of day. besides, wouldn’t the flagship car be better served by launching in Germany? The Frankfurt motor show is in September. I think we have a better chance of seeing it there than April 2013 at Beijing.

via [AutoNews]