Car makers in Germany face up to scandal
Battered Volkswagen among first to break ranks
Frankfurt am Main — German car makers faced a brewing scandal on Monday as suspicions grew that they had colluded illegally for decades, further damaging the industry’s image and exposing it to huge financial risks. News weekly Der Spiegel reported on Friday that German car makers Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, BMW and Daimler had secretly worked together from the 1990s onwards on huge areas of car development, construction and logistics — including how to meet increasingly tough emissions criteria in diesel vehicles. Both buyers and suppliers of the car giants suffered from the under-the-table deals, the magazine alleged. For the world’s largest car maker, Volkswagen, the diesel emissions scandal alone has already cost tens of billions of euros since it admitted to cheating on regulatory tests in 2015. That is likely to be why the Wolfsburg-based firm, along with Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler, was one of the first to hand over details of the alleged broader collusion between the five fi...
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