Spanish Auto Manufacturer To Start Operations in Costa Rica
Costa Rica could soon be home of a car assembly plant, confirmed by the Spanish auto manufacturer Santana Motor. The production line would be for an  "all terrain" vehicle.

Santana Motor S.A. is principally involved in the manufacturing, selling and financing of all terrain vehicles under the trademark "Suzuki". In 1998 Santana Motor Andulucia, S.L., was formed and its activities are the manufacture of motor vehicles and spare parts for Santana Motor. 

The Costa Rican operation expects to generate initially at least 50 direct jobs and many more indirect jobs as local suppliers of parts and services will be part of the assembly process.

The plant will be located near the La República newspaper plant in San José, housed in a 2.800 square metre building, which now only requires a permit by the Ministerio de Comercio Exterior before it can start operations.

Based in Linares, Spain, Santana will be bringing to Costa Rica the Santana Anibal and Santana 350, two popular vehicles in Europe and around the world.

The origins of the Santana company can be traced back to the formation of Metalurgica de Santa Ana, S.A. in Linares, on 24 February 1955. The company's factory, which would manufacture agricultural machinery, had been built with the aid of public funding from the Spanish government, which was keen to promote the industrialization of the province. The following year, an agreement was reached with Rover to build the Land Rover at the plant, with the first Spanish-built models scheduled to reach the marketplace in 1959; in the event, that deadline was beaten by a year.

By the early 1990s the focus of the company's operations had changed completely from Land Rover to Suzuki, but the story doesn't end there. The new century saw the company facing sharply declining sales (2000 - 33,821 units; 2001 - 22,736), resulting in a loss of 301 million Euros. Santana decided that it needed to broaden its product base, and introduced a new model – the PS-10 Anibal – at the 2002 Madrid Motor Show, with sales beginning in the autumn of that year.

Bringing the story full-circle, the Anibal, is in fact a thinly-disguised Land Rover Defender, powered by an Iveco 2.8-litre turbodiesel engine, and produced in two main body styles – a 5-door station wagon and a Jeep-like cabrio. Interestingly, a front-wheel-drive version is also available in both body styles.