LOL back to the future type of falling out? It sounds almost poetic.
Something Has Snapped in Italy’s Stormy Relationship With Europe
- Thread starter themickey
- Start date
That's exactly the problem with Italy. They had huge fights with other EU members about their budget deficit that had to be reduced. They refused and told they will go over the limit.
And now Germany, and other members should just help Italy? Germany is not the only country that is opposed to Eurobonds.
Export to Italy is very very small. Biggest part is cars. Like Mercedes, BMW, VW, Audi, Porsche... I wish the Italians good luck in trying to buy that kind of cars in China.
Below is a list showcasing 15 of Germany’s top trading partners. That is, countries that imported the most German shipments by dollar value during 2019. Also shown is each import country’s percentage of total German exports.
- United States: US$132.8 billion (8.9% of Germany’s total exports)
- France: $119.5 billion (8%)
- China: $107.5 billion (7.2%)
- Netherlands: $93 billion (6.3%)
- United Kingdom: $88 billion (5.9%)
- Italy: $76.2 billion (5.1%)
- Poland: $73.6 billion (5%)
- Austria: $70.9 billion (4.8%)
- Switzerland: $63.7 billion (4.3%)
- Belgium: $51.6 billion (3.5%)
- Czech Republic: $49.9 billion (3.4%)
- Spain: $49.7 billion (3.3%)
- Hungary: $30.1 billion (2%)
- Russia: $29.7 billion (2%)
- Sweden: $27.8 billion (1.9%)
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I think Germany is the one at fault here. They are insisting on holding to obsolete economics that no longer pertain since Keynes, and since the world transitioned to fiat money. And what is the result? It is that Germany is on the edge of recession. An economic state brought on by their own pig-headedness.
With regard to engineering , and in particular with regard to cars, some of the world's best engineered cars come from Italy.
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Yeah, right.
- Lamborghini is owned by the Germans and became only really successful when it was taken over by them. Quality increased so much that sales went up massively.
- Bugatti is owned by the Germans.
- Ducati is owned by the Germans.
- Fiat had to go together with Chrysler to survive. Horrible quality of cars.
- Lancia and Alfa Romeo are in survival mode.
- Ferrari is the only car that has a reasonable quality. But if you compare it with a Mercedes AMG they are far behind. We see that in the Formula 1 where Mercedes is already for many years unbeatable. Thanks to German engineering.
- Pagani is my favorite Italian car. Oooh, it has an AMG engine...from...Germany. Why not an Italian engine?
Maybe google "Fyra" to see how good Italian engineering is. They had to take back/ cancel orders for hig speed trains worth billions from Belgium and The Netherlands. Unseen disaster for the Italians.
BTW, I am not German and have no financial or business interests in Germany. I also know Italy fairly well as I did business with them for about 15 years, and I am actually living in Italy.
The grass is always greener on the other side. I respect your opinion on these matters, yet I am not fully in agreement. You've picked out a bunch of custom built cars to highlight, but that's a niche market for billionaires; hardly representative of the main car markets.
Fiat, for the most part, has been well managed. They forced GM, prior to GM's bankruptcy, to pay them nearly a billion dollars to let GM out of an agreement GM unwisely executed with Fiat years ago. Fiat controlled Ferrari. They were an 80% owner from ~1969 to very recently when they wisely sold their majority stake. Previously Fiat and Ferrari shared much body design and engineering, including engine and transmission design. For example, the 70-early-80s Fiat Spyders were equipped with Ferrari designed engines and transmissions with scaled down displacement. Those drive trains in the Ferrari's and Fiats of that era were the among best ever made. Their handling matched the high quality of the drive train, and the body designs of the Spyders by the Pininfarina body works remain iconic.
Fiat picked up Chrysler at a bargain basement price. Not so much because they needed Chrysler, but because Fiat saw the opportunity to profit hugely from that deal. Chrysler, who had been owned by Daimler Benz before Daimler sold it at a substantial loss to private equity, had shed the greatest amount of dead weight among all U.S. car companies as a result of the financial crisis. They were the leanest, and therefore the buyer would be taking on the least amount of unwanted baggage. Fiat wisely decided to buy them. Now how well they manage their North American business remains to be seen. It is far to early to tell how well Fiat will do in the North American Market. Fiat was, and is still, one of the world's great motor vehicle manufacturers. If the North American operation continues to be managed as well as it was under Sergio Marchionne, then I think this time around they will succeed in North America.
If you want to experience the problems with Germany's brilliantly over-engineered cars just buy one. Rats will eat the wiring, insulated brilliantly with an environmentally sound soy oil polymer that every rodent loves. And that's been going on for years. They have done absolutely nothing to solve the problem or compensate the unfortunate suckers who bought their cars. There is no problem getting today's German Cars repaired, which they will need often if you want all features to continue to work as delivered from the factory in Finland. Just get out your checkbook, no problem. "Yes sir, we can fly in that wiring harness for you from our Bavarian plant in three days. We will have to take the engine out to install it however."
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FIAT
Maybe read this two articles about Fiat carefully, that will show you reality is different from what you wrote:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/05/why-fiats-classic-italian-cars-are-struggling-in-the-us.html
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/05/23/fiat-chrysler-cars-sales/3667799002/
MERCEDES
I never heard about that cable problem. Show me links to articles about that problem.
I bought my first Mercedes in 1984. I had 2 Mercedes, 3 BMW's and 1 Audi. Now driving an AMG. Drove in total around 2 million kilometers. Never had real expensive repairs in almost 25 years.
Are you sure you speak about Mercedes? Maybe it was Fiat?
My mother had a Fiat 124 spider cabrio. After five years there was a hole in the bottom plate of the chassis. Rusted through. Areas around the front lights had the same problem.
I know only about 1 quality problem from Mercedes. They wanted to bring SUV's to the USA so they had to deal with a nasty tariff on truck imports. So like Toyota, BMW, and many others, Mercedes-Benz set up manufacturing stateside to make a domestically produced truck with the 163 chassis ML. We'll it won truck of the year in 1998 when it was first released, then was voted worst truck of the year by 99. The design was an amalgam of German hardware stuck together with GM reject quality electronics, and the local labor had little experience and apparently less pride in work quality. There were cars that had sealed body sections cut open to remove Budweiser bottle caps after hunting down rattles, broken welds on catalysts, insulation panels falling into moving windows and sunroofs, missing fiber optic splices, and the list goes on before you even dig into core design failures such as the torsion suspension with no bump stops on an SUV, the lumela roof, rear bumpers torn off by towing, chattering tranfercases, and the ever failing AAM. Until 2003 this truck was a roach thanks to the US quality labor.
German management of Mercedes threatened to close the US plants if quality would not improve massively.
Maybe read this two articles about Fiat carefully, that will show you reality is different from what you wrote:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/05/why-fiats-classic-italian-cars-are-struggling-in-the-us.html
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/05/23/fiat-chrysler-cars-sales/3667799002/
MERCEDES
I never heard about that cable problem. Show me links to articles about that problem.
I bought my first Mercedes in 1984. I had 2 Mercedes, 3 BMW's and 1 Audi. Now driving an AMG. Drove in total around 2 million kilometers. Never had real expensive repairs in almost 25 years.
Are you sure you speak about Mercedes? Maybe it was Fiat?
My mother had a Fiat 124 spider cabrio. After five years there was a hole in the bottom plate of the chassis. Rusted through. Areas around the front lights had the same problem.
I know only about 1 quality problem from Mercedes. They wanted to bring SUV's to the USA so they had to deal with a nasty tariff on truck imports. So like Toyota, BMW, and many others, Mercedes-Benz set up manufacturing stateside to make a domestically produced truck with the 163 chassis ML. We'll it won truck of the year in 1998 when it was first released, then was voted worst truck of the year by 99. The design was an amalgam of German hardware stuck together with GM reject quality electronics, and the local labor had little experience and apparently less pride in work quality. There were cars that had sealed body sections cut open to remove Budweiser bottle caps after hunting down rattles, broken welds on catalysts, insulation panels falling into moving windows and sunroofs, missing fiber optic splices, and the list goes on before you even dig into core design failures such as the torsion suspension with no bump stops on an SUV, the lumela roof, rear bumpers torn off by towing, chattering tranfercases, and the ever failing AAM. Until 2003 this truck was a roach thanks to the US quality labor.
German management of Mercedes threatened to close the US plants if quality would not improve massively.
My father bought a brand new E-class in 2003, a few years later that thing left him on the side of the road. Estimate by Mercedes was that it needed an engine rebuild...
Merkel wants to fund a 750M Euro Covid recovery fund with EU issued debt - whatever that means. She actually used the term "EU-issued debt". Germany will have to change it's tone about EU austerity given post-COVID reality if they truly want to keep the EU intact.
Notice the correlation with the years, and how the world economy was fairing. It is no wonder that as the world improved after the 2008/9 hit, more and more exotic cars were sold, culminating in 2019.