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Originally Posted by Roberto I'm intrigued about that - which companies did Daimler-Benz buy?
The BMW/Rover "thing" was a disaster too - amazing that anybody actually wanted to buy Rover in the first place. |
They owned Auto Union, I'd have to check on the exact years, and they did not know really what to do with the little two-stroke DKW, which then became the Auto Union "Donau", and back to DKW F-series cars. They ended up selling Auto Union to VW.
The other company I had in mind was Studebaker-Packard and it wasn't an actual purchase of the company but initially (1957) a distribution agreement with DB and around 1964 they (Studebaker) sold their interests to DB I think the last Studebaker was built in 1966. The point with Studebaker that I had was that DB handling of the affairs of another company helped speed up it's demise. At least that's the way it looks to me. But since I know that you are very knowledgeable about these issues, feel free to correct me if I have misrepresented something due to poor memory. The Auto Union deal was a straight forward "they just did not know what to do with it" and the Studebaker-Packard deal was more of a bad business association kind of a thing where DB seems like they had the opposite of a "Midas Touch" in that arrangement and Studebaker and Packard ended up in the history books.
In 1959 DB was about to "rescue" BMW, but fortunately for everyone that did not happen due to the Quandts who had a sizeable stake in DB, decided to divest in DB and buy BMW instead.