Costa Mesa a Fitting Home for Mercedes

If all those Mercedes-Benzes on local roads haven’t done the trick, the German car maker’s decision to move its regional corporate office to Costa Mesa should get the message across: Orange County is major Mercedes territory.

The county’s four Mercedes-Benz dealers are ranked first, second, fifth and seventh in new car sales among all the company’s U.S. dealers and account for a big piece of business in the region.

That’s not the principal reason, though, that the office was moved from Hollywood after 40 years, says Robert J. Wills, Southern California region vice president for Mercedes-Benz of North America. The big factor was that Orange County became the most central locale when Mercedes decided a few years ago to divide the state into two regions.

“When we were handling all of the states, it made sense to be in Hollywood because were close to LAX and our dealers in the north,” Wills said. With the split, however, the center of the Southern California region moved south.

Mercedes already had its U.S. design center in Irvine, so Orange County became the logical place for the regional office, on Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa. Its 40 employees cover Southern California from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border, as well as Hawaii and Guam.

*

John O’Dell covers major Orange County corporations and manufacturing for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5831 and at john.odell@latimes.com.