By now every Catalan will have heard of the planned Audi Q3. For weeks its name was on the news every day as the Audi headquarters in Germany studied in which of the many Volkswagen production sites this model would be produced. After the workers of Seat agreed to a salary freeze for the next years and the regional Catalan and central Spanish governments chipped in a few hundred million Euro in soft loans the Seat factory in Martorell won the internal competition so that from 2011 this new model will be produced there. It will be the most expensive passenger car ever to be built in Spain (at least in modern democratic Spain as the history of Hispano-Suiza and similar models is long over).
It will be so expensive that probably none of the workers building it will ever drive one. And it will probably be so "dirty" that it would not qualify for new subsidies about to be given to car buyers who trade in their at least ten year old former cars for new ones that contaminate less.
And it will not free Spain from its slave-like relation with international car companies, such as Ford, General Motors or Renault, that build small passenger vehicles in not really efficient plants (compared to those by Japanese carmakers; due to low educational standards) at various Spanish locations and squeeze out subsidies from all layers of government whenever there is a crisis and a reason to threaten with massive job cuts.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment