Both manufacturers are profiting from strongly rejuvenated product lines. Demand in the overall car market is rather restrained. |
Daimler is being saved by Chrysler and financing, especially with all the restructuring costs at Mercedes. |
From a capacity-utilization point of view, a production-line stop is deadly. |
Going forward, DaimlerChrysler's fortunes will be driven by Mercedes Benz. |
In excess of 6 billion could be anything, but this year at least you can partially forgive them for giving such a fuzzy outlook because they are facing a couple of unknowns themselves. |
It seems the rejuvenation of the (Mercedes-Benz) product lineup has been quite successful, which means financials at Mercedes-Benz this year should be subject to drastic improvement. I guess these guys will be good for at least one or two earnings surprises. |
It takes longer to rebuild the image than it took to destroy it so they have to make sure that the facelift version of the E-Class is of a higher quality standard and more failure-safe than the pre-facelift version has been. |
You have to bear in mind that January of last year was the weakest (January) since 1996, so we have a certain positive basis effect here. |