A friend of mine used to buy the first model of any new and hot BMW. He'd know the specs better than the sales people and he spent a fortune on them.

They also spent more time in the shop with electrical gremlins than any car that I've ever seen. One of our employees insisted on a Mini, which is also BMW as their lease car. No other car we had had that much trouble. BMW is a crap brand that used to make very good cars. Mercedes is getting there. Neither of these will survive in the longer term if they don't somehow get back to their roots: making safe and reliable vehicles with good resale value. But for both companies the problems are in the same domain: they never got the hang of software.

> Neither of these will survive in the longer term

German government will do everything possible to prevent these companies from failing, no matter how bad the situation gets. This means that current management can simply apply the "next quarter" strategy without any realistic downside.