CAR INDUSTRY IN GERMANY

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27367, 4 June 1954, Page 6

CAR INDUSTRY IN GERMANY

Daimler-Benz Firm’s Recovery (From a Reuter Correspondent) STUTTGART. The Daimler-Benz company at Untertuerkheim, near Stuttgart, where Gottlieb Daimler invented the first petrol engine 71 years ago, has produced its 250.000 th motor vehicle since the war. Starting again almost from scratch in 1946, the company, with its four subsidiaries, has become once more one of the world’s leading producers of quality cars. As Mercedes does not compete on the popular market, its output cannot compare numerically with that of Volkswagen, but it employs more labour—3s,ooo workers—than any other German motor car company and is the biggest producer of lorries and buses. In 1953. it manufactured 34,975 cars and 16,685 lorries, buses and tractors. Mercedes is now moving into the export market in a big way- The company either owns or nas arrangements with assembly plants in Belgium. Holland, Denmark, Brazil, and Argentina, the last two having been erected since the war. Recently, it reached an agreement with the Tata concern for the construction of an assembly plant in India. Details of the deal are still being negotiated, but it expected that the plant will assemble both Mercedes cars and heavy lorries, exported to India from Stuttgart and Mannheim m “knocked-down” shape. It is improbable, however, that Mercedes will have any share holding interest in the plant. The Indian Government is strongly interested in building up a national motor car industry of its own, with the aid of the five foreign companies which have erected assembly plants there in the -past. One of the firm’s specialities is a diesel-driven car, with which it has achieved widespread success. Last year, Argentina ordered 3500 of these cars for taxis, and the order is still being carried out. The diesel engine is supplied on demand at a small extra cost with the 170 and the new 180 models, both medium-sized family cars developing 40 brake horsepower. The consumption of diesel oil, in every country much cheaper than petrol, varies between 34 to 40 miles a gallon, so that the car’s running costs are little higher than those of a powerful motor-cycle. Only three other companies in the world, Borgward. Fiat and Standard, are manufacturing diesel cars. Mercedes claims that it has many years’ lead over all of them. In 1953, it sold 17,000 diesel cars.