“Vorsprung durch Technik = progress through technology. The website of BBC makes a brief reference to the German car industry as it is certainly regarded as the most succesful car industry.
The German car industry is considered to be the “cornestone” of German economy. Several German brands are worldwidely outstanding and recognizable nowadays like Audi, Daimler, Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen and Porsche among its dominant players.
Germany is the birthplace of car manufacture. In 1886 Karl Benz created a couch with a combustion engine: The first car was a reality! In 1901 Germany was almost producing almost 900 cars per year, while nowadays approximately 10 million cars, half of them are exported. There are about 1.26 million employees. A noteworthy point has been the merger between Daimler and Benz, which born the Daimler-Chrysler company. Daimler-Chrysler is greater car-seller of Germany today, while the American Chrysler Corporation is the largest one in the world.
The names of the car companies are frequently characterized from strange, even funny stories. For example when August Horch created his first car, he had to face a problem: there was an existing company which was operating under Horch’s name. So he choose “the Latinized version of the word Horch and came up with the name Audi. Another example is that of Mercedes, initially a name of a Daimler’s sport car, which stems from a client’s daughter name……...
Reference: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/lj/cultural_notes/car_industry.shtml
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