Not the kind of article I normally expect in our sunday newspaper business section but rather interesting:
It goes on about Porsche's success with the 991 and new Boxter and how they are adding 8 saturday shifts between now and Dec. to try and boost production. They go on about how effectively the entire VW group is running at an impressive 90% of capacity with Porsche leading the income board with around 16.000 Euros profit per car average. BMW and Merc not doing badly either...
It then goes on about the rest of the European car makers, in particular the French and Italians, all of which are suffering from serious overcapacity and lack of demand for their products (I suppose we should exclude Ferrari here).
It goes on to show how the Germans cut back on pay and increased investment on new technology during the recession while the others, well, did about the opposite. So, the current success is abviously a result of this.
Right - it's not quite over with that.
Now the French, in particular, aiming for the smaller cars, want to introduce serious penalties (based on CO2 emissions) targeted mostly at the bigger German cars in order to boost demand for the local produce.
The paper goes on to say this could be a spectacular own goal as it is likely that the Germans are now in a position to meet these tough new limits even with the big engines and the French are not.
I seems WWI is still being fought. It's just that the trenches have moved somewhat...

Nice to see Porsche having come back so strong, litterally leap-frogging everybody. A year ago nobody saw this comming...

Rainier

 

Rainier, thanks. One of the problems the French have is that their designs are just awful and ugly. No, FUGLY for the most part and that they seem to cater for people that are looking to buy a people mover. Where are the times of the Alpine A110 I am asking myself !! :-)

 

Interesting, thanks for summary.

 

Super interesting thanks so much for sharing.

 

Thanks indeed! French and Italian car makers get what they deserve : unreliable and tacky cars made in high cost countries can not be profitable. It's not WWI or WWII, it is simple automotive Darwinism. In my young days, I have had 2 Peugeot's... worst cars ever. Went German after that (and now a bit of Japanese too). My only mistake was to own a Chrysler for a couple of years when I came to the US. No wonder Fiat has taking over Chrysler: quality, fit and finish were -unfortunately- very similar.
It has been funny to see French car makers claiming for the last 25 years that "now" their cars had finally reached the same level of quality as German cars You can not deny they have a good sense of humor!

The VW group deserves to become number 1 in the world. I am curious to see if we'll observe Audi vs. Porsche rivalry on the track in the near future though. Could be interesting!