It’s not all blood and tears in Europe. Actually, the bloodier Europe looks, and the more Marchionne & Co do cry, the bigger the smiles at European carmakers with heavy exposure to foreign markets.  The Euro is way down, and a low Euro means heavy profits from abroad – if you have business abroad. BMW sure does, and it posted its second best quarterly earnings in company history. Profit before financial result (EBIT) amounted to € 2.27 billion in the April-June 2012 quarter.

That is down 19 percent from the same quarter of 2011. But who’s to complain when there is an operating margin of 11.8 percent? According to Reuters, the BMW results show “the widening gulf between export-oriented premium auto makers helped by Chinese and U.S. demand and their ailing mass market peers.”