VW goes from the Beetle to the world's most valuable company
The automotive industry is on its knees. General Motors is burning through $1bn a month and is worth a fraction of what it was. Other manufacturers including Ford and Honda are cutting production.
But Volkswagen, the business that gave the world the Beetle and the camper van, found itself the most valuable company in the developed world yesterday, the result of another bout of financial speculation that went spectacularly wrong.
Panic-buying by hedge funds drove the company's share price into the stratosphere, allowing VW at one point to leapfrog oil giant ExxonMobil to become the biggest company by stockmarket value at just short of a staggering €300bn (£240bn). Amid the buying frenzy, the shares touched €1,005 each, five times the level at which they were changing hands on Friday.
End of the road for Soviet elite's must-have car
Sleek, low-slung and preferably black, it was once an object of desire for every Soviet bureaucrat. Now, more than half a century after it was first produced, Russia is stopping production of the legendary Volga saloon.
Once a symbol of stylish living and the preferred car of mid-level apparatchiki, the Volga has struggled to compete with the inomarki - foreign cars - that have flooded the automobile market since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The car manufacturer, Gaz, owned by Oleg Deripaska, confirmed this week that mass production of the famous limousine will end within two months.
Note that, although the models based on the M24 will be discontinued, the Volga marque will continue on the new
Siber.
