Teufel! The car in front is a Toyota

Gloom everywhere in the car industry. Chrysler is going for a song to Fiat... and GM is going, well, bust  – in a carefully managed, politically sensitive sort of way. And it's not much better in Europe. Sales of new cars across Europe fell by 9% in March 2009 compared with a year ago, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association.

But wait, what's this? In Germany, Europe's largest car market, sales are actually up – and by an astonishing 40% last month. The reason for this anomaly is not hard to fathom. It's called scrappage, which means the state doles out cash (€2,500 in Germany) if you exchange your old banger for a new, or near-new, vehicle. Wunderbar! Let's all have more of it. Even at this moment Alistair Darling is preparing a parallel scheme for the Budget, and Gordon Brown has as usual gone overboard by promising to save the consumer – if not the world – £5,000 on the cost of a new electric car. Never mind that these vehicles are, to date, technically inadequate for most daily usage.

Before getting over-excited let's take a closer look at the German scheme, for all is not what it seems. Yes, car sales have soared. But have the German car marques – BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Audi and VW – been the main beneficiaries? No they have not. Not many of their models, even in nearly new condition, are priced under €10,000. The cars in front are foreign-owned Toyota, Nissan and Honda. So much for propping up the German car-manufacturing sector.

It's no wonder Sarko thinks German chancellor Angela Merkel "doesn't get it".

Who's fooling whom, BMW?

Spot on. BMW advertising is such a finely tuned piece of engineering after WCRS' 30-year tenure of the account that even the car company's April Fool's Day jokes resonate the brand. In The Guardian today, The Ultimate Driving Machine boasts of its new "Magnetic Tow Technology - For once we're happy to be behind the competition". The idea being that BMW-patented super magnets allow the driver to lock on to the car in front, so saving fuel bills. "Why burn your fuel, when you can burn someone else's?" says the copy. Post-modern irony, or an unconscious revelation of the self-centred one-upmanship at the core of BMW's image?