Today, Daimler’s gullwing SLS AMG sports car is going on sale in Germany. Mercedes dealers all around Deutschland are celebrating the occasion with the appropriate pomp & circumstance. The Hamburg branch of Daimler for instance welcomes its guests with an easter egg hunt.

Do you have the €177,310 ($237,000) in disposable funds to get behind the wheel of that 571 hp, 197 mph fast beast? Take a number. (Read More…)

I’m running out of gratuitous tie-up pictures, so let’s celebrate the good news with a video: The Nikkei [sub] sends us the news that Nissan and Daimler “are in the final stages of negotiations to obtain stakes of less than 5 percent  in each other.” This comes on the heels of yesterday’s news that Daimler and Renault will exchange shares. With Nissan joining the couple, the tripartite axis will be perfect. No Italians this time. (Read More…)

After long hand-holding and necking, Daimler and Renault finally seem to progress to third base. The Financial Times reports that the French and the Germans “are in the final stages of wide-ranging strategic partnership talks that would involve the German and French car makers taking ‘symbolic’ minority stakes in each other.” (Read More…)

Money-wise, the United States is in a bit of a tough spot. Must create revenue wherever it can. From red light cameras to shaking down foreign companies. On Tuesday, Germany’s Daimler AG was charged with violating U.S. bribery laws “by showering foreign officials with millions of dollars and gifts of luxury cars to win business deals,” as Reuters has it. After asking “how much will it take for this to go away?” Daimler plans to pay $185m to settle charges by the U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission. (Read More…)

Time to break out the (tasteful) shibari pictures. “Nissan would seriously consider joining a comprehensive tie-up between Renault S.A. and Daimler AG if the alliance they are discussing happens,” says The Nikkei [sub]. With Renault and Nissan tied-up both at the hips and on top, such a move would make more than just sense. (Read More…)

Again, Renault and Daimler are reported to having a serious tête–à-tête that could lead to a formal marriage. According to the Financial Times, “Daimler and Renault are discussing acquiring mutual equity stakes as part of a possible alliance that would go beyond their current talks on small cars.”  Their source?  “Two people briefed on the matter.”

Stakes to be bought or swapped were likely to be smaller than 10 per cent. (Read More…)

Remember Maybach? With eight years and untold millions now spent in a futile attempt to dethrone Rolls-Royce at the tope of the automotive pecking order, it seems that the monument to Daimler’s arrogance and greed will be going the way of Pontiac and HUMMER. Auto Express reports that

The firm plans to launch mildly facelifted versions of its three-model line-up – with new grilles and LED lights likely to be the only changes – before the marque is allowed to slip away.

Bosses have now privately admitted plans to wind down the brand – resurrected in 2002 – due to disappointing sales. The Maybach decision is part of Mercedes’ wider plans to take the next-generation S-Class upmarket.

Will there be any tears for the world’s most pimped-out S-Class? Of course not. Despite actively courting celebrities, and later, actually marketing the brand, Daimler was never able to break its super-luxe brand into the stratosphere of household-name luxury. At least not for more than a few months during relatively go-go economic times. As we recently noted, the experiment has conclusively failed. Maybach has nowhere to go but the ash heap of history. If we ever miss it too much, we’ll be sure to buy a brand-new, fully-loaded S-Class and take it to the least-tasteful tuner we can find.

Chinese battery maker and aspiring automaker BYD earned $215m in the fourth quarter of 2009, bringing its net profit for last year to $555.2m, reports Automotive News [sub]. BYD’s performance outstripped analyst estimates, which projected fourth quarter profits of $130.5m, and full-year profits of $473.2m. Though the Chinese auto market grew 46 percent to 1.6m vehicles, 47 percent of BYD’s 2009 sales came from the firm’s cell phone battery business, which is expected to give back recent gains as the global economic crisis takes its toll. Not so with BYD’s auto business: the firm has raised its 2010 car sales projections 14 percent, with sales of 800k foreseen. And as China’s car market takes off, BYD, which has one of the nation’s best-selling cars in its F3 compact, is expected to keep growing. Says one JP Morgan analyst:

BYD is a company that can’t be underestimated. If the Chinese vehicle market expands 10 percent this year BYD’s sales will grow at least 40 percent — 50 or even 60 percent is also a possibility.

(Read More…)

BMW and Daimler don’t really like each other. As Herr Baron Schmitt put it, “Daimler engineers view their colleagues as boorish Bavarian upstarts. BMW engineers think Daimler is a congregation of has-beens”. Bluntly speaking, there’s no love lost between them. Which makes the following news that much sweeter to the “Bavarian upstarts”. And which makes the has-beens gnash their teeth. (Read More…)

Uh-oh. Daimler must be needing money really bad. Reuters has on their wire that Daimler is trying to sell their complete 5.34 percent share in Tata Motors for cheap. They are offering the package at a discount of 4 to 7 percent below the stock’s Monday close, and hope to raise $429 million. (Read More…)

A couple of weeks ago, TTAC reported how Dieter Zetsche was re-elected as CEO of Daimler for another 3 years. In that article we mentioned the many challenges that face him. Mainly, how to make Daimler sustainably profitable. Size matters in the auto business. An unattached Daimler has a hard time achieving the economies of scale someone like say Audi or Lexus can. So unless Daimler fancies being taken over (and we all know Daimler likes to be on top in any tie-up) it’ll have to form partnerships and joint ventures to get those cost savings Daimler needs. The big arranged wedding between BMW and Daimler isn’t going anywhere. Instead, Daimler announced that it had formed a partnership with Renault to produce the new generation Smart car. Then, Daimler announced it had formed a partnership with BYD to develop an electric car for the Chinese market. Now Daimler is trying to form a new partnership to achieve massive cost savings: A partnership with the tax payer. (Read More…)

The Geneva Auto Show is a great place to rub elbows, show concept cars, and plant or shoot down rumors.  BMW yesterday dismissed the view that premium carmakers would have to consolidate. This here is in the latter category.

BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer said that BMW would not merge with Daimler. Or anybody else for that matter. Now who had that crazy idea? Apparently, it’s going around. (Read More…)

Dow Jones [via Easybourse.com] has a hot release that is sure to be burning up the wires: Daimler and Chinese EV firm BYD have signed a deal to develop an electric vehicle “specific to the requirements of  the Chinese market.” The new EV will be sold under a new, jointly-run brand and will be developed at a new Chinese technology center to be built as part of the joint venture. According to the release, “the companies’ understanding also includes further discussions on additional business opportunities of mutual interests,” all of which raises some interesting questions. Like why Volkswagen was caught napping: the Wolfsburg boys reportedly signed a MOU with BYD last March, but somehow Daimler has beaten them to the punch… on the very same day that VW announced that it wants to be the electric-mobility market leader by 2018, no less. Another open question: why develop a EV for the Chinese market, when that market’s tolerance for EV premiums appears to be fairly low? After all, with Daimler providing the car expertise, BYD might have a chance at the US and European markets where EV demand is actually proven. Also, how screwed is Tesla at this point? Though these questions remain very much unanswered, BYD is certainly making progress towards becoming a major car biz player, despite the many criticisms that have been leveled against it.

Yesterday, we wrote about how Dieter Zetsche needs to start earning his retirement. He took the suggestion to heart. Automobilemag.com has it that the long rumoured liaison between Daimler and Renault will finally bear fruits. Daimler and Renault will have baby twins! (Read More…)

This one’s a bit of a golden oldie, but in light of the recent round of promotions at the Haus of Daimler (not to mention this video’s unintentionally prophetic tagline), it’s worth mentioning. Charges in the 6 year old SEC-DOJ investigations of what was then DaimlerChrysler may be settled by Daimler for “about $200 million” according to anonymous Bloomberg [via BusinessWeek] sources. The probe had looked into allegations that the German firm regularly bribed government officials in a number of jurisdictions (including Sadaam Hussein, in the Oil For Food scandal), the broad strokes of which the firm essentially admitted in 2005. Though Daimler announced that it would cooperate with investigators and that “several” employees were fired, details were never released. At least one whistleblower has alleged that knowledge of slush funds and bribery were known at the highest ranks in Daimler, and the ever-helpful NY Times notes that

As recently as 1997, the German government counted the bribes paid to foreigners by German companies as tax- deductible.

No wonder these guys promote from inside.