Finance on four wheels

摘要

In the land of the autobahn, love for cars and the firms that build them knows no bounds. What's more, the relationship appears to be for worse as well as for better. For even as car sales slump, German savers are pulling money from their safe, but staid, savings banks and entrusting it to their racy-if ropy-carmakers.rnBMW Bank's deposits have jumped by almost 70% over the past five months. Those at Mercedes-Benz Bank have doubled over the same period and Volkswagen's financial-services arm ended the year with deposits up by about a third. Banking with car companies is nothing new in Germany. Some big carmakers have been holding money for their customers for over a decade, using the cash to finance car loans and leases. But the recent surge in deposits is a peculiar consequence of the credit crunch in Germany.