#BER

Soon, Anything Goes At Europe's Car Dealers

In 2003, when I had a different (and much better paying) job, I wrote for the umpteenth time: “This law makes Europe the most liberal car market in the world, more liberal than the freewheeling U.S. car market.” Of course I was cheating a bit, because as we all know, the U.S. car market is anything but freewheeling. “This law” was the Block Exemption Regulation, BER for short. It allowed any EU dealer to sell any car, allowed non-branded parts in branded dealerships, and allowed any workshop to perform warranty repairs on your car. That came with a big IF: IF the new car dealer complied with the standards set by the brand and IF the workshop complied with the service standards of the brand. Even these last vestiges are now going away, turning the supposedly socialist Europe into a land of unbridled car capitalism.

Bertel Schmitt Jul 13, 2011

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SCE to AUX "we had an unprecedented number of visits to the online configurator"Nobody paid attention when the name was "Milano", because it was expected. Mission accomplished!
Parkave231 Should have changed it to the Polonia!
Analoggrotto Junior Soprano lol
GrumpyOldMan The "Junior" name was good enough for the German DKW in 1959-1963:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DKW_Junior
Philip I love seeing these stories regarding concepts that I have vague memories of from collector magazines, books, etc (usually by the esteemed Richard Langworth who I credit for most of my car history knowledge!!!). On a tangent here, I remember reading Lee Iacocca's autobiography in the late 1980s, and being impressed, though on a second reading, my older and self realized why Henry Ford II must have found him irritating. He took credit for and boasted about everything successful being his alone, and sidestepped anything that was unsuccessful. Although a very interesting about some of the history of the US car industry from the 1950s through the 1980s, one needs to remind oneself of the subjective recounting in this book. Iacocca mentioned Henry II's motto "Never complain; never explain" which is basically the M.O. of the Royal Family, so few heard his side of the story. I first began to question Iacocca's rationale when he calls himself "The Father of the Mustang". He even said how so many people have taken credit for the Mustang that he would hate to be seen in public with the mother. To me, much of the Mustang's success needs to be credited to the DESIGNER Joe Oros. If the car did not have that iconic appearance, it wouldn't have become an icon. Of course accounting (making it affordable), marketing (identifying and understanding the car's market) and engineering (building a car from a Falcon base to meet the cost and marketing goals) were also instrumental, as well as Iacocca's leadership....but truth be told, I don't give him much credit at all. If he did it all, it would have looked as dowdy as a 1980s K-car. He simply did not grasp car style and design like a Bill Mitchell or John Delorean at GM. Hell, in the same book he claims credit for the Brougham era four-door Thunderbird with landau bars (ugh) and putting a "Rolls-Royce grille" on the Continental Mark III. Interesting ideas, but made the cars look chintzy, old-fashioned and pretentious. Dean Martin found them cool as "Matt Helm" in the late 1960s, but he was already well into middle age by then. It's hard not to laugh at these cartoon vehicles.

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Soon, Anything Goes At Europe's Car Dealers

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