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BMW's profits tumble nearly 90% BMW makes the Mini car in Oxford BMW's net profits tumbled nearly 90% to 330m euros ($423m; £306m) last year, as the global economy weakened and reduced demand for cars. Earnings were hit by 2.4bn euros of exceptional costs linked to bad debts, personnel costs and provisions to cover risks on used car markets. Separately, the European Investment Bank made a 400m euros loan to BMW as part of a wider industry package. The EIB approved 3bn euros in loans to the European auto industry. The money will go to German, Italian, French and Swedish...

Swiss con man Helg Sgarbi has been sentenced to six years in jail after admitting sleeping with and blackmailing a succession of rich women out of millions of pounds including BMW heiress Susanne Klatten. The 44-year-old wined and dined a string of rich wives and widows, including Germany's wealthiest woman Mrs Klatten, winning their confidence and then asking for money.

The case of a Swiss playboy who allegedly seduced Germany's richest woman, defrauded her of millions of euros and tried to blackmail her out of millions more by revealing details of their sexual encounters, is to be laid bare today in a Munich courtroom where he is due to go on trial. In a case that has become known as "the gigolo versus the billionaire", Helg Sgarbi, 44, could face up to 15 years in jail if he is convicted of the crimes against Susanne Klatten, the heir of BMW and the 55th richest person in the world, and five...

Luxury cars targets of meltdown rage 1 Mar 2009 When Berlin resident Simone Klostermann returned from vacation and couldn’t find her Mercedes SLK, she thought it had been towed. Police told her the $45,000 car had been torched. “They’d squirted something flammable into the car’s engine block in the gap between the windshield and the hood,” said Klostermann. The 34-year-old’s experience isn’t unique in the German capital. At least 29 vehicles were destroyed in arson attacks this year, most of them luxury cars, according to police. The number is already about 30% of the total for 2008. The latest to...

Warning to 223,000 Mini drivers after cars suffer sudden failure in power steering By Daily Mail Reporter 18th February 2009 Angry drivers are urging Mini to recall almost a quarter of a million cars following a spate of sudden power steering failures. Many motorists have had frightening experiences and near-miss crashes after the system abruptly cut out, making controlling their vehicles extremely difficult. The fault is believed to be a problem in 223,000 Minis bought between 2001 and 2007. At risk: Models of Minis bought between 2001 and 2007 can display the fault Following an investigation by the BBC's Watchdog...

February 16, 2009 BMW to cut 850 jobs at Oxford Mini plant Marcus Leroux and Jenny Booth BMW, the German vehicle maker, today announced plans to lay off 850 weekend agency staff at its Mini factory in Cowley, near Oxford, as the slowdown in demand for cars worsens. Agency workers leaving Cowley this morning expressed their anger at being given just one hour’s notice of losing their job. The company made the announcements just as the staff affected were finishing their shift. "It’s a disgrace. I feel as though I’ve been used. We should have been given one month’s notice,...

Jim DeMint should be cloned! BMW in SC is in the process of a $750 million dollar expansion. “This is a business problem, and it cannot be solved with a political solution.”-Sen. Jim DeMint

Toyota, BMW, Hyundai Workers' Senators Oppose Rescue

ot News: BMW's Electric Car BMW is poised to give the go-ahead to a tiny Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) that will help to revolutionise city-centre driving. The rear-engined city car could be called Isetta and will first arrive in American showrooms in 2012. The project was created because of new Californian regulations (soon to be copied by 12 other US states) which require big car makers to sell between a few hundred and a few thousand ZEVs every year from 2012.

Back in the mid 1970's, BMW exploded into the Midship Engine realm with a sexy little car called the M1. It has since been laid to rest and been reflected upon with sadness and envy. Jump to 2008, and BMW has released a concept design that they are dubbing the "M1 Homage." First off, BMW has made it very clear that this is a "concept design" and there are no "official" plans for production. However, keep in mind that there have also been rumors circulating that BMW was going to make a return to the Midship engine genre of...

Readers of London's Sunday Times kept telling the auto reporters that the official mileage numbers for the Prius were overstated by about 15 imperial mpg. Intrigued, the Times decided to test things out by running a Prius against a BMW 520d with regenerative braking from London to Geneva, a 460-mile trip. Then they added 100 miles of urban running to give the Prius a chance to recover ground on its proper turf. The verdict: the conventional diesel with Efficient Dynamics beat the full hybrid by 2.2 imperial mpg, or 1.8 US mpg. This means that an executive sedan with all...

The Toyota hybrid is hailed as an eco-paragon, so how does it fare against a big BMW? To find out our correspondents go on a run to Geneva. The Prius, like the iPod, is more than a piece of clever technology. It symbolises something bigger – a responsible attitude, a healthier way of living. Toyota has sold more than a million examples of the car since launching it in 1997 and it has attracted a worldwide following led by Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz and much of the rest of Hollywood. It’s classified by the American government as the “most fuel-efficient...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- On one side of the Atlantic Ocean, BMW says it will cut 7.5 percent of its work force over two years. On this side of the water, the company says it plans to increase production by more than 50 percent by 2012. "This is completely driven by the plunge in the dollar," said Greg Gardner with Oliver Wyman, publisher of the Harbour Report on automotive manufacturing activity. "It is untenable to produce at a much higher cost in Germany." The euro climbed to record heights Friday, reaching $1.5463 before falling back to $1.5335 in late trading...

What you are looking at is the physical representation of Hyundai's will to succeed in the U.S., also known as the 2009 Hyundai Genesis. The Korean automaker's first attempt at a rear-wheel-drive luxury sedan will debut in Detroit next week and arrive on our shores later this year (we think) with a price tag that starts below $30,000. As is Hyundai's way, it will feature power, performance and amenities that belie its little price tag. First, the design. The Genesis sedan has clean lines and uncluttered surfaces that look detailed and, frankly, expensive. Yes, it's derivative. There's a bit of...

(CNN) -- Five young men died Saturday when the car they were in drove off the end of a private airstrip near Ocala, Florida, became airborne for 200 feet and slammed into an oak tree, authorities said. "This had to be the worst vehicle crash that I have ever seen during my career," said Randy Robinson, a spokesman for the Emergency Medical Services Alliance with 27 years on the job. The 2008 BMW was split in two in the wreck, which happened at 3:45 a.m., said Lt. Mike Burroughs, a spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol Troop B. He told...

KENSINGTON - A Vallejo man tried to kill himself and a female companion by driving their car into a fountain at a Kensington cemetery, police said today. David Duane Lewis, 45, intentionally crashed the BMW into the fountain at the Sunset View Cemetery and Mortuary about 8:30 p.m. Sunday, Kensington Police Chief Greg Harman said. El Cerrito police officers were then called to a nearby disturbance involving Lewis and his companion, Harman said. The officers concluded it was related to the crash at the cemetery, where the BMW was found submerged in the water, the police chief said. Lewis was...

October 31, 2007 - A fourth person is dead because of a grinding crash Monday night in Newark. Delaware State Police investigators report the driver of the Honda, Matthew Wilson, 23, died Tuesday night because of his injuries. The sole survivor of the BMW, Hector Villa Gran-Merida, 18, is out of a coma, but still in critical condition. The driver of the BMW, Israel Palmero Merida, 17, did not have a drivers license. Police believe drunk driving and speeding led to the horrific crash that killed four people and critically injured one other in Newark, Delaware Monday night. Around 9:45...

DANA POINT, Calif. A San Juan Capistrano woman whose blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit when her BMW veered off a Dana Point road early Monday and fatally struck a man on a bicycle was booked on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter, authorities said. Michelle Stearns, 26, was arrested at the scene of the roughly 1:55 a.m. accident along Del Obispo Street near Quail Run, Jim Amormino of the Orange County Sheriff's Department said. Stearns was driving north on Del Obispo when she lost control of the car, went over the curb, hit a traffic sign and struck...

By Germany's wealthy and reclusive Quandt family, a major BMW shareholder, has gone on the defensive. For decades the family repressed its Nazi past, but a new documentary film provides new photos of old revelations that have prompted the Quandts to confront their own history of using slave laborers in factories during World War II.It is difficult to ignore the stories of former forced laborers during the Nazi era. Their memories are painful to listen to, even when they are presented calmly and without any finger-pointing. One former forced laborer telling his story today is Carl-Adolf Soerensen, a former Danish...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall a German company plans to give the Trabant, a stinky two-cylinder car that became the symbol of communist East Germany, a new lease of life. The new Trabants will no longer have tiny engines, noxious fumes and plastic bodies but will retain the iconic design of the original -- like Volkswagen's new Beetle or the new Mini. The Trabant was the most common vehicle in the former East Germany and was produced without major changes for nearly 30 years. Known in the West as a "spark plug...

BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer is not happy. In a case which proves that nothing is immune to the sleight of hand of Chinese manufacturers and their ability and willingness to clone any product on earth, BMW has been forced to threaten legal action over a cheap knock-off version of their popular X5 SUV. The Chinese-made SUV which ironically enough is called CEO is almost identical in appearance to BMW’s X5…especially from the rear. “We have already taken steps against the marketing of the CEO (SUV) in Europe. Should this car be presented at the IAA, we will look into taking...

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Loss-making Ford Motor Co. is planning to sell Swedish car maker Volvo and German carmaker BMW could be a possible buyer, a Swedish newspaper said on Monday. The Goteborgs Posten daily reported on its website that a source within Ford said BMW has been studying a possible purchase of Volvo. The Financial Times also reported last Friday BMW was in informal talks to buy Volvo. "We cannot comment on speculation, this is a question for our owner," said a spokeswoman for Volvo cars. Ford bought Volvo in 1999 and it is now part of the U.S. company's...

German carmaker BMW wants to buy Gothenburg-based Volvo Cars from Ford, it has been reported. British car magazine Autocar, quoting sources in the car industry, wrote that BMW had hired a European investment bank to analyse Volvo. The magazine added that BMW had also looked at Italian company Alfa Romeo, currently owned by Fiat. Car industry analysts told Autocar that BMW wants to broaden its brand portfolio to strengthen future growth. It was also suggested that Volvo would improve BMW's environmental and safety profiles. But car industry analysts who spoke to Swedish news agency TT dismissed the idea of Volvo...

This wasn’t the first time I’d opted for European delivery. In fact, after counting all the license plates I’d collected from these international adventures, I discovered I was on my eighth visit. Normally, when my wife learns I want to go to Stuttgart or Munich, she digs in her proverbial heels. So I had to package my automotive connection with a week in Paris. I made the arrangements to pick up a BMW 335 at the Munich factory. Here’s how the deal went down… My local BMW dealer booked my order, and then faxed my specifications and delivery date to...

For all the nonsense about the love affair between Americans and their cars, people seem to spend a whole lot of time and effort to avoid climbing into a car. Super Stop & Shop's Peapod provides home delivery of groceries. That eliminates one's weekly trip to the grocery store. Get the grocery list online, pick the items, and the food appears in the insulated box outside your house. People can go to Match, Jdate, EHarmony and Match.com to start dating without even heading to a bar. What happened to joining the ski club? What happened to taking night classes? Tennis,...

The following are all replies that Dallas TX women have written on Child Support Agency forms in the section for listing "father's details". These are genuine excerpts from the forms (truth be told??). 1. Regarding. the identity of the father of my twins, child "A" was fathered by Jim M. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of child "B", but I believe that he was conceived on the same night. 2. I am unsure, as to the identity of the father of my child as I was being sick out of a window when taken unexpectedly...

Wednesday October 25, 2006 By TOM KRISHER AP Business Writer DETROIT (AP) -- From July to September, GM, Ford and Chrysler racked up losses as large as the entire annual gross domestic product of Africa's Malawi. That's $7.5 billion. Despite the massive losses, company officials and some industry analysts say the Big Three can do little more than wait for drastic cost cuts to kick in and new products to take hold before they can staunch the bleeding. All three reported third-quarter losses this week, with General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group joining the misery Wednesday. A $1.5...

A British engineering firm has put together a high-performance hybrid version of BMW's Mini Cooper. The PML Mini QED has a top speed of 150 mph, a 0-60 mph time of 4.5 seconds. The car uses a small gasoline engine with four 160 horsepower electric motors — one on each wheel. The car has been designed to run for four hours of combined urban/extra urban driving, powered only by a battery and bank of ultra capacitors. The QED supports an all-electric range of 200-250 miles and has a total range of about 932 miles (1,500 km). For longer journeys at...

Two-second penalties for both Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher set up a thrilling qualifying session for the Hungarian Grand Prix on Saturday afternoon. With the two key championship contenders eliminated before the top-ten shootout, the honours for pole position fell right at the very end to McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen, whose last-gasp lap of 1m 19.599s came just as Felipe Massa looked to have bagged the first Formula One pole of his career. Also, Hungarian Grand Prix stewards have cancelled American Scott Speed’s three fastest qualifying times as punishment for impeding another driver during Saturday’s session. The move means the Toro...

Kimi Raikkonen repeated his 2005 qualifying position for McLaren at Hockenheim on Saturday afternoon to beat Michael Schumacher. But with Felipe Massa third, Ferrari look very threatening despite too much oversteer in the final session, and everything will depend on fuel loads on Sunday.On paper, Ferrari look set for a strong run tomorrow, and as in Indianapolis, Fernando Alonso has a lot to do to safeguard his championship lead.

Michael Schumacher took his 68th pole position here in Magny-Cours this afternoon, underlying that his success in Indianapolis was not just due to any Michelin conservatism but also Bridgestone’s improved performance. The former champion looked strong all day and lapped his Ferrari in 1m 15.493s to seal the issue just as arch-rival Fernando Alonso posted 1m 15.785s for Renault and Michelin. It was not quite the result that the partisan crowd had expected, and it will be fascinating to see on Sunday which of them has the greater fuel load.

F1 Grand Prix is on American soil. Don't miss the race LIVE in its entirety from Indianapolis Motor Speedway! SUNDAY: 12:30pm ET on SPEED Channel!

Barcelona is a circuit that every Formula One team knows well as they complete thousands of kilometres there in testing throughout the season. The mix of high-speed corners, a very long straight and an abrasive track surface, makes the Circuit de Catalunya a uniquely ‘complete’ circuit. Finding the right set-up compromise is always a tricky business at the Spanish Grand Prix. World champion Fernando Alonso was the fastest race driver in Friday afternoon’s second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya. In front of a huge home crowd, the Spaniard finished third in his Renault, behind Honda’s and Red Bull’s...

I need advice from a motorcycle freeper bud on how to get the inaccessible battery charged without taking the leftside cowling off. Weather is warm in Missouri and I have much to do besides getting at the damn battery to charge it after winter storage. Is there an easy way to get this battery charged. Can the battery be charged by the accessory sockets?????????

Ferrari's Michael Schumacher said that Ferrari was ready for the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday. Giancarlo Fisichella has pole position for the Malaysian Grand Prix, with Jenson Button alongside him and the Williams of Nico Rosberg and Mark Webber behind them on the grid.

Michael Schumacher equalled the late Ayrton Senna’s record for pole positions when he took his 65th here in Bahrain this afternoon during Formula One racing’s first knockout qualifying session. Fellow Ferrari racer Felipe Massa will start alongside him, with Honda’s Jenson Button and Renault world champion Fernando Alonso on row two.

Luxury car maker BMW has had its German website blacklisted by Google after it was caught trying to artificially boost its popularity ranking on the world's leading internet search engine. The delisting was reported by several bloggers and later confirmed in a blog post by Google software engineer Matt Cutts wrote that the methods used by BMW were a violation of the search engine's guidelines. The sanction - known colloquially as the "Google death penalty" - means that a Google search for terms like "BMW" or "BMW Germany" will not return a direct link to the car company's German website,...

Here's the cartoon:

RAVENNA, Ohio (AP) -- A man facing a big bill because he had blown the engine in his 1997 BMW decided to bury his car instead and collect $20,000 from his insurance company by claiming it was stolen. Matthew Mueller rented a backhoe in October 2002 and buried the car on property owned by his father in rural northeast Ohio. Police received tips last year and excavated the vehicle. Mueller, 35, of Akron, was sentenced to a year in prison for insurance fraud, tampering with evidence, falsification and receiving stolen property. He apologized in Portage County Common Pleas Court on...

While off for the holidays, I took my 90-year-old, former Marine, Republican dad to his inner-city barbershop. Dad goes to the same barbershop that my brothers and I went to when we were growing up. Different people now own the shop, and I hadn't set foot in there in probably 35 years. Is it still, I asked Dad, the same "afro-centric," white-man-done-me-wrong, trash-talking joint? "Yes," sighed my father, who taught my brothers and me to overcome racism through hard work and personal responsibility. When we get there, it's packed. Two barbers, cutting hair, with about six or seven people waiting....

The shiny new car, topped with a big red bow and parked in the driveway on Christmas morning, isn't just commercial fantasy or every 15?-year-old's dream. Luxury auto dealerships in the Washington area say about 20 percent to 30 percent of their December sales are purchases made as holiday gifts, prompting them to keep a hefty supply of oversized red bows. About 20 percent of customers buying cars at the Rosenthal Jaguar in Vienna, Va., this month are buying holiday presents, sales manager Ogun Yilmazer said. The dealership is usually in on the plan, dropping the car off at friends'...

Rice University Scientists have done it. After BMW announced the possibility of producing a car that would utilize nanotechnology practically for all functions, Rice University scientists developed the world’s first single-molecule car- the car that was driven on a gold microscopic highway. It a small coupe that is devoid of any plush seating or conventional steering system. But it is a real solution for the grid locked cities. With a wheelbase of less than 5 nm, parking it is a cakewalk. According to Professor Tour this development is a watershed in so far as constructing successfully a nanocar represents the...

BMW LAUNCH R1200GS ADVENTURE 30 October 2005 The NEC saw the launch of another new 2006 BMW motorcycle, the much tipped R1200GS Adventure. Launched by Charley Boorman at the NEC on press day, the bike has a host of detail changes to the road based R1200GS model, which make the Adventure very much a `go anywhere' motorbike. It is lighter than the standard GS, has a larger fuel tank and there are adjustable footpegs, levers, seat height, screen etc so that the rider feels as comfortable as possible on the Adventure. With sales of the GS machine up by 38%...

BERLIN - Police in the German capital are such bad drivers that they are losing their beloved BMW squad cars after having been involved in too many crashes, media reports said Wednesday. At least 22 of the leased BMW 5 series estate cars have been totally demolished in accidents since the force took delivery of the vehicles in December 2002, said the Berliner Kurier newspaper. Over 60 per cent of the crashes were the fault of officers behind the wheel, the paper added. As a result, Berlin's cops are being downgraded in motor world and will in the future drive...

On the left is an authentic BMW 7 series, and on the right a model produced by the Jili Automobile Group of the Zhejiang province. (Courtesy of the Liberty Times of Taiwan)

Budapest — Kimi Raikkonen blew away the field Sunday at the Hungarian Grand Prix, winning by 35.5 seconds for his fourth victory of the season. Pole-sitter Michael Schumacher finished a distant second, with his brother, Ralf Schumacher, taking third. Raikkonen's sixth career victory gave him 61 points this season, second to Formula One points leader Fernando Alonso. Alonso finished out of the points, but still holds a commanding lead with 87 points.

SEATTLE, Washington (Reuters) -- A 17 year-old high school student faked the theft of his 2002 BMW M3 in order to collect insurance money to upgrade to a Bentley, police said on Thursday. The teen, a student of Skyline High School in Sammamish, a suburb of Seattle, had reported the car stolen earlier this week, said Michael Chiu, a spokesman for the police in Bellevue, another suburb located between Seattle and Sammamish.

MUNICH, April 6 - Striding through the parking lot next to his factory, trailed by smoke from his Cuban cigar, Johann P. Ackermann gestures toward a black Mercedes-Benz sport utility vehicle. The roof, hood, and doors on the passenger side are punched in, as if by a giant fist. The internal screws that roll down the windows are embedded in the metal of the doors. "A bomb exploded right next to it," Mr. Ackermann said. "Destroyed a building. But everybody in the car lived." He delivers this sales pitch in a brusque, homicide-detective patter that somehow seems perfect for the...

BMW's assembly plant in Spartanburg, S.C. will build a new minivan-like crossover vehicle within three years. The vehicle will use many components from the next-generation X5 sport-utility that goes on sale in two years, says Burkhard Goeschel, BMW board member for development and purchasing. The unnamed vehicle has just been approved and BMW is considering various styling concepts, Goeschel adds. The crossover will be built in Spartanburg because the United States will be its primary market. The same U.S. suppliers that produce parts for the X5 will deliver components for the new vehicle. Goeschel says the four-door crossover will have...

At the January auto show in Los Angeles, U.S. car enthusiasts got their first look at the H2R, a race car from BMW. Building it took just 10 months, but the race it's designed to win will last for the next 10 years and beyond. It's the race to stem pollution from vehicles that burn gasoline and diesel fuels. The H2R runs on hydrogen, the gas that lights the sun. All carmakers are scrambling to harness this clean fuel, driven by long-term worries about oil supplies as well as environmental harm. Washington and other governments share the concerns. When it...