Mercedes Falls Behind BMW In India
If you hear a loud screeching noise coming from the Stuttgart area, that’ll probably be Dieter Zetsche berating his Asian management team. The Economic Times of India reported that the Mercedes-Benz marque has lost its leadership of the luxury car segment in India to BMW after nearly ten years on top. Daimler also posted a 10.43% decline in sales in India, as volume fell to 3,247 units (if that doesn’t seem like much, consider that Mercedes also trails BMW in China by about 60k units to about 90k). And just like that, out come the excuses: “We are behind BMW in 2009 because of limited availability of our E-Class car … I don’t want to focus on leadership. We want to have a profitable growth,” Mercedes Benz India Managing Director and CEO Wilfried Aulbur told reporters. “We see a very strong growth in 2009 and it will be a blockbuster year for us. We are very bullish and we expect, it will be a high double-digit growth.”
More by Cammy Corrigan
Latest Car Reviews
Read moreLatest Product Reviews
Read moreRecent Comments
- Lou_BC Collective bargaining provides workers with the ability to counter a rather one-sided relationship. Let them exercise their democratic right to vote. I found it interesting that Conservative leaders were against unionization. The fear there stems from unions preferring left leaning political parties. Wouldn't a "populist" party favour unionization?
- Jrhurren I enjoyed this
- Jeff Corey, Thanks again for this series on the Eldorado.
- AZFelix If I ever buy a GM product, this will be the one.
- IBx1 Everyone in the working class (if you’re not in the obscenely wealthy capital class and you perform work for money you’re working class) should unionize.
Comments
Join the conversation
I wish that Herr Zetsche would focus less on production volume, and more on the quality of build and materials. The Mercedes-Benzes I coveted as I was growing up had two key characteristics: Rock-solid quality and relative scarcity. Those things well justified their premium price.
Mercedes' problem is that they're not really able to understand that they make mistakes. All of the German marques do this, but Daimler is the worst: in their minds, everything they do is brilliant. On top of that, there's whole rafts of people who've built their careers enforcing this echo chamber. You can't fight this once it's taken hold, because any sign of reticence or admission of fault is seen as a critical weakness. You can never be wrong, because if you're wrong about one thing, you might be wrong about everything. So you make damn sure you're never seen as being wrong, and you build the house of cards ever higher until it collapses spectacularly. If this sounds a lot like the D3 in general, and the General in particular, it should.