BMW's Dodgy Dealers
The Financial Times reports that Anti-trust officials in Switzerland are investigating the Bavarian car maker due to allegations made by a Swiss consumer TV show. The TV show sent undercover reporters to BMW dealerships in Germany (Swiss and Germany share a border, you know) to try and buy a car. The show claims to have found that BMW is blocking its dealerships in European countries from selling their cars to Swiss residents.
What makes this particularly egregious is that although Switzerland isn’t a member of the European Union (they like to stay neutral), it does have Bilateral trade agreements which guarantee free trade with its neighbors. Restricting trade? Under a free trade agreement? Uh oh…
The Swiss competition commission (Comco) said on Tuesday that it launched a probe into this affair. Because the Swiss Franc is reaching new highs against other currencies and the seeming natural concept that Swiss car prices are generally higher than the EU’s, more and more Swiss people are shopping abroad for their cars. The TV expose was merely the final straw that pushed Comco into investigating these allegations.
This isn’t the first time a carmaker has tried to pull a stunt like this. The Financial Times reports about how in 1998, Volkswagen got fined €90 million by the European Commission for stopping its Italian dealers from selling cars to German and Austrian customers. Seems like Europeans still haven’t got the hang of this free trade malarky.
More by Cammy Corrigan
Comments
Join the conversation
sugarbrie, a car has to be titled in the USA for six months before it can be exported. So your plan will not work. Cars 2008 and newer also have different bumper supports/dampers in the USA this is a major expense, at least on the German cars. I've exported hundreds of cars to canada.
I saw a small Mercedes B Class tooling around the Washington DC beltway recently. It surprised me at first until I saw the Ontario license plates. I suppose it may not be importable new or otherwise ??
While I can't really see the evil of simply leaving to BMW that which is BMW's, I guess the meddling in the business of others defect is now popping up even in Switzerland. Too bad, as it was probably the last straggler in the West down that particular road to irreversible decline and irrelevance. Anyway. A more important point is; a car company involving itself heavily in nonsense such as this, is obviously no longer being run by engineers and car people; but by lawyers, marketing hacks and others too stupid for undertakings as complicated as actually building something of value. And that reflects really poorly on a company like BMW.
All I can say: This can get VERY expensive ....