Doug DeMuro: prediction

Transcript context

…Doug, the way the value chain evolved for selling cars, there's this very clear delineation in the US, at least, until Tesla of separating the dealership from the manufacturer. There is no direct-to-consumer. Was that already obvious at this point in history when Porsche has these two different companies? It's an interesting question. I suspect the answer is more or less. In some brands, I bet they were selling direct-to-consumer, and some I bet they weren't, some of the smaller ones maybe. I suspect the reason this worked out is because these companies didn't want to be the ones who were distributing all these cars across and doing all this. They were focused on manufacturing. I think there also might have been a technical reason, which is, even though this new Volkswagen was reconstituted as a company, it's only shareholders at this point in time who were the German government. So both the national West German state and the state of Lower Saxony within West Germany, which still to this day holds 20% of Volkswagen, which is crazy. They would IPO Volkswagen (I believe) in 1960 or 1961. Even though it was a company, it was a German national company to operate in other states, other countries in Europe. They probably needed third parties. Wild, right? Okay. Ben, you hit on this a minute ago. What the hell? Why is the new western-controlled West German, post-Nazi government giving this deal of a lifetime to these former Nazis?…

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