Moscow invites Porsche to work with ZIL auto plant

• November
• 22

5:42 am Vehicles

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has invited Porsche to help develop production at the city’s ZIL automobile plant.

The mayor met with Porsche president Wendelin Wiedeking and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Friday.

The city has two Automobile plants, one of which now produces about 130,000 Renault cars per year and plans to expand output to 250,000 vehicles in 2008, which would be twice the number of cars that the former Moskvich plant produced in the Soviet era, Luzhkov said.

“We have a second automobile plant - ZIL, where we produce mid- sized, 3.5-tonne trucks. We invite your firm, perhaps, to assemble or produce Porsches at ZIL,” the mayor said.

Luzhkov recalled how the Moscow authorities invited Metro Cash & Carry to work in the city. “We tried to persuade them for a long time: come, you’ll like it and you’ll earn such an incredible level of profit that you’ve never dreamed of,” he said

Metro hesitated for a long time, but after its “first store opened and worked for a while, they came to me and said: how about we open ten stores. And now this firm has already gone into Russia’s regions and we are recommending to them where their stores can operator successfully and where not,” Luzhkov said.

Wiedeking responded by saying that Porsche is the biggest shareholder of Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda, and it will consider this offer.