In excess of 6 billion could be anything, but this year at least you can partially forgive them for giving such a fuzzy outlook because they are facing a couple of unknowns themselves.

It takes longer to rebuild the image than it took to destroy it so they have to make sure that the facelift version of the E-Class is of a higher quality standard and more failure-safe than the pre-facelift version has been.

Daimler is being saved by Chrysler and financing, especially with all the restructuring costs at Mercedes.

It seems the rejuvenation of the (Mercedes-Benz) product lineup has been quite successful, which means financials at Mercedes-Benz this year should be subject to drastic improvement. I guess these guys will be good for at least one or two earnings surprises.

Both manufacturers are profiting from strongly rejuvenated product lines. Demand in the overall car market is rather restrained.

You have to bear in mind that January of last year was the weakest (January) since 1996, so we have a certain positive basis effect here.

Going forward, DaimlerChrysler's fortunes will be driven by Mercedes Benz.

From a capacity-utilization point of view, a production-line stop is deadly.