Helmut Petri, member of the Board of Management for DaimlerChrysler AG.

But Mercedes is in "a little bit of a special situation" Petri said. "Our customers across the world want a typical Mercedes car; they do not want something special to Asia or America. It has to be a Mercedes based on German engineering." And that is what they get. "We have the same build standard at all our plants with a common production system and process," he added. Specific options may vary and there may be special suspension settings, for instance in South America, and minor variations in interior trim, but generally there are no differences."

Maintaining very high quality is perhaps more important for Mercedes-Benz than for almost any other global car company. "For us, our toughest market, from the aspect of a customer's quality expectations, is our home market of Germany. Customers—all customers—are most particular about quality. Then comes Japan, with customers paying great attention to detail such as paint finish. However, in the U.S., our second biggest market, we find that specific customers will pay particular attention to very high quality, while customers on average do not. Of course, we produce cars to the same quality for the U.S. as we do for Germany or Japan, so all worldwide customers gain by the standards of those countries," he said.

Mercedes' standard approach in terms of international design and production also embraces crashworthiness. Like many other companies, it designs to meet the toughest legislation and provides that benefit for all markets. "Meeting crash legislation is one of our biggest challenges for the development phase of a new car and for consideration of production. It is a very difficult world; on the one hand we have differing government requirements in Europe and the U.S., and on the other special individual requirements from organizations like NCAP in Europe, plus individual standards set by automotive magazines. We have to design and engineer for all of these and they may bring goal conflicts," he explained. Petri sees little hope at present of a cohesion between these varying requirements, partly for political reasons and also because of commercial competitiveness.

However, he feels, as do many other senior automotive industry executives, that there is growing global compatibility on the subject of exhaust emissions: "There is a dialogue between the USA and Europe together with Japan. We have activities under way to help achieve agreement, and step by step I believe we will get there."

A difficulty facing a car company like Mercedes is deciding what may be an innovation to be incorporated across its model ranges and what is a gimmick. Cupholders, which have been de rigueur in North American cars for years, remain a classic example of innovation, although to European eyes they originally looked suspiciously like a gimmick. "One of our development goals is leadership in innovations," said Petri. "These will be for the benefit of global customers. Navigation and entertainment systems are very important in Japan. We have had ABS for many years and now also have ESP (electronic stability control), and, most recently, ABC (Active Body Control) on the new CL. All of these we regard as innovations, but sometimes it is difficult to differentiate between a gimmick and an innovation. And sometimes our engineers and customers may not agree amongst themselves. For example, on the previous model S-class, the trunk handle popped out of the trunk lid when required. Many people said this was a gimmick, so the new S-class does not have it — but now some of our customers ask why it is not fitted!"