Rheinmetall wants to assemble trucks in Romania for Romanian army.

The MHS Group through MHS Truck & Bus, representing more than 11 years the MAN brand in Romania, has since June been the exclusive importer and service partner of Rheinmetall MAN military vehicles in Romania, the Business Review reports.

Rheinmetall displayed an emblematic 8x8 MAN chassis at BSDA 2018, the defense exhibition organised in Bucharest (Picture source: Army Recognition)

The first imported model is the 42M 6×6 BB military vehicle of the HX class presented at an event organized by MHS Truck & Bus and Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicles GmbH (RMMV). “The new partnership seeks to benefit from the complex infrastructure that the MHS Group holds throughout the country – service network, outlets, spare parts stock in the service network,” said Michael Schmidt, president of MHS Group.

Rheinmetall is not the first to present a military HX family vehicle in Romania: a few months ago, Rheinmetall exhibited an HX family truck (an 8×8 configuration this time) in the Moreni test rig. Since 2010, MAN Military Vehicles (MMVS), a joint venture between MAN and Rheinmetall, has been developed, produced and sold for these product families.

In addition to the standard technical advantages they are equipped with, starting in 2017 a process of adapting the HX and TG models, which takes into account the local geographic and Romanian army characteristics, began. Transport vehicles, specially created and adapted locally, today play a key role in the success of tactical missions.

Models of the HX family are among the most widely used in the world, in extremely varied operations. The current list of countries that have purchased HX class configurations includes Germany, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which gives Rheinmetall an important advantage in terms of interoperability and logistics. Rheinmetall intends to assemble, in the Moreni Automechanical Plant (UAM), military trucks in the HX family according to the orders that the Romanian state could do.