Drive a Luxury Car? Somebody May Be Watching...
02-27-09, 12:39 PM
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Drive a Luxury Car? Somebody May Be Watching...
Sorry for the potentially fearmongering title but like anything else, tough economic times can bring out the best, and worst, in people. I had a chance to talk with an old friend this morning and he told about the speculation of what is going on, especially as it relates to luxury autos. Found this article from a few weeks ago about Germany but my understanding is they are not alone.
Arson attacks on Berlin’s luxury cars continue
Published: 4 Jan 09 13:51 CET
Unknown arsonists continued a series of attacks on Berlin’s luxury cars on Saturday night by setting fire to two vehicles in the Friedrichshain district.
According to the police, the fire service was called to the Pettenkoferstrasse around midnight, where a car had been found in flames. Two hours later another burning car was spotted on Frankfurter Allee nearby. Both cars were badly damaged.
Several luxury cars have been set alight in the capital in the past week in what is beginning to look like a concerted attack on conspicuous wealth. Seven expensive cars were found burning in the city on Tuesday night, while another 15 were damaged by the flames. Early Friday morning a car was found burning in Christinenstrasse in the Prenzlauer Berg district.
Another six cars were consumed in a large fire early on Sunday morning in Michendorf near Potsdam. Nearby houses were also seriously damaged.
Since the police suspects a political motive to the attacks, a federal force has been called in to investigate the case.
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20090104-16525.html
Besides parking our luxo barges where we believe we have less chance of some moron opening a door into it, there are other factors in driving an expensive car. Some people think they are making social statements others are just looking for where the money is. Either way, sure glad we haven't gotten this whacky in the US yet. Germany does have a volatile political structure but I am pretty sure this "punish the luxury car" ploy has spread to other countries like the UK. Just didn't find a link quickly.
Arson attacks on Berlin’s luxury cars continue
Published: 4 Jan 09 13:51 CET
Unknown arsonists continued a series of attacks on Berlin’s luxury cars on Saturday night by setting fire to two vehicles in the Friedrichshain district.
According to the police, the fire service was called to the Pettenkoferstrasse around midnight, where a car had been found in flames. Two hours later another burning car was spotted on Frankfurter Allee nearby. Both cars were badly damaged.
Several luxury cars have been set alight in the capital in the past week in what is beginning to look like a concerted attack on conspicuous wealth. Seven expensive cars were found burning in the city on Tuesday night, while another 15 were damaged by the flames. Early Friday morning a car was found burning in Christinenstrasse in the Prenzlauer Berg district.
Another six cars were consumed in a large fire early on Sunday morning in Michendorf near Potsdam. Nearby houses were also seriously damaged.
Since the police suspects a political motive to the attacks, a federal force has been called in to investigate the case.
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20090104-16525.html
Besides parking our luxo barges where we believe we have less chance of some moron opening a door into it, there are other factors in driving an expensive car. Some people think they are making social statements others are just looking for where the money is. Either way, sure glad we haven't gotten this whacky in the US yet. Germany does have a volatile political structure but I am pretty sure this "punish the luxury car" ploy has spread to other countries like the UK. Just didn't find a link quickly.
02-27-09, 01:45 PM
#3
Exactly. Then the guys who started the fire will eventually pay for it with higher insurance prices, or they wont be able to afford insurance on their own cars eventually. Basically just stupid as they are really only hurting themselves in the long run and not really hurting the rich people at all.
02-27-09, 03:52 PM
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Unknown arsonists continued a series of attacks on Berlin’s luxury cars on Saturday night by setting fire to two vehicles in the Friedrichshain district.
According to the police, the fire service was called to the Pettenkoferstrasse around midnight, where a car had been found in flames. Two hours later another burning car was spotted on Frankfurter Allee nearby. Both cars were badly damaged.
Several luxury cars have been set alight in the capital in the past week in what is beginning to look like a concerted attack on conspicuous wealth. Seven expensive cars were found burning in the city on Tuesday night, while another 15 were damaged by the flames. Early Friday morning a car was found burning in Christinenstrasse in the Prenzlauer Berg district.
Another six cars were consumed in a large fire early on Sunday morning in Michendorf near Potsdam. Nearby houses were also seriously damaged.
Since the police suspects a political motive to the attacks, a federal force has been called in to investigate the case.
According to the police, the fire service was called to the Pettenkoferstrasse around midnight, where a car had been found in flames. Two hours later another burning car was spotted on Frankfurter Allee nearby. Both cars were badly damaged.
Several luxury cars have been set alight in the capital in the past week in what is beginning to look like a concerted attack on conspicuous wealth. Seven expensive cars were found burning in the city on Tuesday night, while another 15 were damaged by the flames. Early Friday morning a car was found burning in Christinenstrasse in the Prenzlauer Berg district.
Another six cars were consumed in a large fire early on Sunday morning in Michendorf near Potsdam. Nearby houses were also seriously damaged.
Since the police suspects a political motive to the attacks, a federal force has been called in to investigate the case.
Now, would an owner intentionally do this to a fairly new luxury car? In most cases, no (most likely, it is vandalism, like the article implies....and insurance fraud, if proved, can carry a fine or prison term with it), but I wouldn't rule it out.
Either way, sure glad we haven't gotten this whacky in the US yet.
Dealerships that sell large, heavy, gas-guzzling SUV's (like Hummers, Suburbans, Navigators, etc.....) have had their vehicles vandalized or set on fire right there in the dealers' lots....yes, in America. The police have a name for this crime.........eco-terrorism.
Last edited by mmarshall; 02-27-09 at 03:58 PM.
02-27-09, 04:02 PM
#7
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True.....but Germany is certainly not part of the Third World. It is Europe's richest country, and has its largest economy. And, to top it off, the self-propelled automobile ITSELF was invented in Germany, in the 1880's, by Gottieb Daimler, who went on to found the Daimler company (Mercedes). Henry Ford and Ransom Olds did not get American car production going until a few years later....Ford in 1893 and Olds in 1901. (a little off-topic, maybe, but it just shows the absurdity of the so-called "political" situation in Germany that would trigger something like this).
Last edited by mmarshall; 02-27-09 at 04:09 PM.
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02-27-09, 04:09 PM
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Putting whatever spin you want on it for the reason is fine with me. This started for me with a phone call from Europe this morning and a little search. If you want to read it as non political, OK. But one of the sites I frequent is Bloomberg and while I was out today, what shows up:
Arsonists Torch Berlin Porsches, BMWs on Economic Woe
By Brett Neely
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- When Berlin resident Simone Klostermann returned from vacation and couldn’t find her Mercedes SLK, she thought it had been towed. Police told her the 35,000- euro ($45,000) car had been torched.
“They’d squirted something flammable into the car’s engine block in the gap between the windshield and the hood,” said Klostermann. “The engine was completely destroyed.”
The 34-year-old’s experience isn’t unique in the German capital. At least 29 vehicles were destroyed in arson attacks this year, most of them luxury cars, according to police. The number is already about 30 percent of the total for 2008. The latest to go up in flames was a Porsche, on Feb. 14, two days after a Mercedes was set alight in a public car park.
While youths in Athens protest by throwing Molotov cocktails, in Paris by toppling barricades, and in Budapest by hurling eggs at politicians, protesters in Berlin rage at their economic plight by targeting the most expensive cars -- symbols of German wealth and power.
A group calling itself BMW -- the initials stand for Movement for Militant Resistance in German -- has claimed responsibility for several attacks in left-wing magazines and Web sites, police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said.
One-third of the incidents are classed as “political,” prompting officers to assign a special unit to investigate, Schodrowski said. No arrests have been made. Schodrowski attributed the arson to “a protest against the world economy and rising rents.”
‘Quick to Attack’
German unemployment began to rise last November after almost three years of declines. Deutsche Bank AG Chief Economist Norbert Walter predicts the German economy, Europe’s biggest, may shrink by more than 5 percent this year.
The worst recession since World War II is fueling anger among youths across Europe who “perceive their future as rather precarious,” said Margit Mayer, a politics professor at Berlin’s Free University.
“Whether you look at the Berlin events or these anarchist groups in other European cities and countries, they are all making reference to the deepening economic crisis and how the various governments are dealing with them,” said Mayer, a specialist in urban social and protest movements.
Some groups are “very quick to attack whoever they can make out as responsible for having robbed them of decent life prospects,” according to Mayer.
The Berlin car burnings have been concentrated in up-and- coming neighborhoods such as Prenzlauer Berg, where Klostermann’s car was destroyed in May.
‘Don’t Move in Here’
There, new housing and building redevelopments are pushing out the squatter scene that flourished after East and West Berlin were reunited in 1990, said Andrej Holm, a sociologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt who has studied the change.
Rents that were about half the city average 10 years ago are now about 40 percent above the average, and the car attacks are an attempt to drive wealthy newcomers away, Holm said.
“It means: ‘rich people, don’t move in here -- your cars will be trashed, we don’t want you here’,” he said.
Representatives from Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Daimler AG, the maker of Mercedes, and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG declined to comment on the attacks. Daimler spokeswoman Ute von Fellberg said the matter was about security in Berlin.
Berlin Matter
“This is not a matter for the producer, rather it’s a matter for the city of Berlin,” BMW spokesman Alexander Bilgeri said today in a phone interview.
While Prenzlauer Berg and other central neighborhoods such as Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are thriving, at least in parts, Berlin as a whole remains Germany’s “subsidy capital” almost 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell, said Tobias Just, a real-estate economist with Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. Unemployment, at 14.1 percent in February, is almost double the national average.
Oliver Kappelle, who moved with his wife and two children to Friedrichshain, is unfazed by the perceived threat.
One night last month, Kappelle came across a “heap of junk that used to be a Porsche the night before,” he said. “I was just relieved that he didn’t park in the empty space behind me.”
Baader-Meinhof
Berlin has a history of political protest, with anarchist demonstrators regularly clashing with police on the streets of Kreuzberg during May 1 marches. Kreuzberg, which abutted the Berlin Wall, is represented in parliament by the Green Party’s Hans-Christian Stroebele, a former lawyer who defended members of the Baader-Meinhof gang in court.
Likewise, arson attacks on cars are not new: a Web site, “Burning Cars,” was set up to track the incidents in May 2007, one month before a summit in the northern German resort of Heiligendamm of the Group of Eight industrialized nations. There have been 290 attacks on cars since then, among them 55 Mercedes and 29 BMWs damaged or destroyed by fire, the site records.
“I wouldn’t advise someone to park their Porsche on the street” in Kreuzberg, Berlin police commissioner Dieter Glietsch told the Taz newspaper in June last year.
As the frequency of attacks increases, Klostermann, a company manager who has lived in Prenzlauer Berg for 12 years, remains unbowed.
“I would never want to be regarded as someone who can be driven out of a place where I enjoy living,” she said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...gzo&refer=home
If you have a brain and drive anything expensive, at least when it's new, you get just a tiny bit more aware of your surroundings. Better safe than sorry. For those of you who want what you drive to define you as wealthy, up and coming, hip, successful, thin, attractive, smart, and have straight, white teeth, well, that's up to you. But people who prey on others are looking for signals as to who is worth robbing, if not worse. But let's not dwell on that.
As economic times get worse, there are people who not only find themselves in tough times, they are looking for someone to blame. And as often as not, that bimmer, benz or yes, Lexus, is a pretty good indicator to the feeble of mind. Hasn't really spread to the US yet. OK, there are neighborhoods in the US I wouldn't park my car in but that has little to do with the economy. If the insurance paying for your car makes you right with this, well, I'm just going to leave it at I have a different view of things.
Arsonists Torch Berlin Porsches, BMWs on Economic Woe
By Brett Neely
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- When Berlin resident Simone Klostermann returned from vacation and couldn’t find her Mercedes SLK, she thought it had been towed. Police told her the 35,000- euro ($45,000) car had been torched.
“They’d squirted something flammable into the car’s engine block in the gap between the windshield and the hood,” said Klostermann. “The engine was completely destroyed.”
The 34-year-old’s experience isn’t unique in the German capital. At least 29 vehicles were destroyed in arson attacks this year, most of them luxury cars, according to police. The number is already about 30 percent of the total for 2008. The latest to go up in flames was a Porsche, on Feb. 14, two days after a Mercedes was set alight in a public car park.
While youths in Athens protest by throwing Molotov cocktails, in Paris by toppling barricades, and in Budapest by hurling eggs at politicians, protesters in Berlin rage at their economic plight by targeting the most expensive cars -- symbols of German wealth and power.
A group calling itself BMW -- the initials stand for Movement for Militant Resistance in German -- has claimed responsibility for several attacks in left-wing magazines and Web sites, police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said.
One-third of the incidents are classed as “political,” prompting officers to assign a special unit to investigate, Schodrowski said. No arrests have been made. Schodrowski attributed the arson to “a protest against the world economy and rising rents.”
‘Quick to Attack’
German unemployment began to rise last November after almost three years of declines. Deutsche Bank AG Chief Economist Norbert Walter predicts the German economy, Europe’s biggest, may shrink by more than 5 percent this year.
The worst recession since World War II is fueling anger among youths across Europe who “perceive their future as rather precarious,” said Margit Mayer, a politics professor at Berlin’s Free University.
“Whether you look at the Berlin events or these anarchist groups in other European cities and countries, they are all making reference to the deepening economic crisis and how the various governments are dealing with them,” said Mayer, a specialist in urban social and protest movements.
Some groups are “very quick to attack whoever they can make out as responsible for having robbed them of decent life prospects,” according to Mayer.
The Berlin car burnings have been concentrated in up-and- coming neighborhoods such as Prenzlauer Berg, where Klostermann’s car was destroyed in May.
‘Don’t Move in Here’
There, new housing and building redevelopments are pushing out the squatter scene that flourished after East and West Berlin were reunited in 1990, said Andrej Holm, a sociologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt who has studied the change.
Rents that were about half the city average 10 years ago are now about 40 percent above the average, and the car attacks are an attempt to drive wealthy newcomers away, Holm said.
“It means: ‘rich people, don’t move in here -- your cars will be trashed, we don’t want you here’,” he said.
Representatives from Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Daimler AG, the maker of Mercedes, and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG declined to comment on the attacks. Daimler spokeswoman Ute von Fellberg said the matter was about security in Berlin.
Berlin Matter
“This is not a matter for the producer, rather it’s a matter for the city of Berlin,” BMW spokesman Alexander Bilgeri said today in a phone interview.
While Prenzlauer Berg and other central neighborhoods such as Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are thriving, at least in parts, Berlin as a whole remains Germany’s “subsidy capital” almost 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell, said Tobias Just, a real-estate economist with Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. Unemployment, at 14.1 percent in February, is almost double the national average.
Oliver Kappelle, who moved with his wife and two children to Friedrichshain, is unfazed by the perceived threat.
One night last month, Kappelle came across a “heap of junk that used to be a Porsche the night before,” he said. “I was just relieved that he didn’t park in the empty space behind me.”
Baader-Meinhof
Berlin has a history of political protest, with anarchist demonstrators regularly clashing with police on the streets of Kreuzberg during May 1 marches. Kreuzberg, which abutted the Berlin Wall, is represented in parliament by the Green Party’s Hans-Christian Stroebele, a former lawyer who defended members of the Baader-Meinhof gang in court.
Likewise, arson attacks on cars are not new: a Web site, “Burning Cars,” was set up to track the incidents in May 2007, one month before a summit in the northern German resort of Heiligendamm of the Group of Eight industrialized nations. There have been 290 attacks on cars since then, among them 55 Mercedes and 29 BMWs damaged or destroyed by fire, the site records.
“I wouldn’t advise someone to park their Porsche on the street” in Kreuzberg, Berlin police commissioner Dieter Glietsch told the Taz newspaper in June last year.
As the frequency of attacks increases, Klostermann, a company manager who has lived in Prenzlauer Berg for 12 years, remains unbowed.
“I would never want to be regarded as someone who can be driven out of a place where I enjoy living,” she said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...gzo&refer=home
If you have a brain and drive anything expensive, at least when it's new, you get just a tiny bit more aware of your surroundings. Better safe than sorry. For those of you who want what you drive to define you as wealthy, up and coming, hip, successful, thin, attractive, smart, and have straight, white teeth, well, that's up to you. But people who prey on others are looking for signals as to who is worth robbing, if not worse. But let's not dwell on that.
As economic times get worse, there are people who not only find themselves in tough times, they are looking for someone to blame. And as often as not, that bimmer, benz or yes, Lexus, is a pretty good indicator to the feeble of mind. Hasn't really spread to the US yet. OK, there are neighborhoods in the US I wouldn't park my car in but that has little to do with the economy. If the insurance paying for your car makes you right with this, well, I'm just going to leave it at I have a different view of things.
02-27-09, 04:11 PM
#9
Lexus Fanatic
True.....but Germany is certainly not part of the Third World. It is Europe's richest country, and has its largest economy. And, to top it off, the self-propelled automobile ITSELF was invented in Germany, in the 1880's, by Gottieb Daimler, who went on to found the Daimler company (Mercedes). Henry Ford and Ransom Olds did not get American car production going until a few years later....Ford in 1893 and Olds in 1901. (a little off-topic, maybe, but it just shows the absurdity of the so-called "political" situation in Germany that would trigger something like this).
02-27-09, 04:13 PM
#10
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I was still editing and refining my posts above when you typed this, RON. I tried to explain my position a little better. 
I would agree it is likely political (and envious of someone else's wealth), but there are other possibilities as well, including insurance fraud.
I would agree it is likely political (and envious of someone else's wealth), but there are other possibilities as well, including insurance fraud.
02-27-09, 06:30 PM
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^^ I was trying to find a tactful way of referring to Germany's politics. I have spent a fair amount of time there albeit not very recently. There are some really scary nutcase splinter groups there. I doubt we really want to get into that here. So I just let it go with what conclusions the articles drew. Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time there probably has seen some of this going on. And my experience predates the rejoining of the communist section which probably has not helped the situation. But my friend has said that the feeling is that this targeting of luxury cars is also going on in the UK but I haven't really spent the time to look for a link to a story on that.
02-28-09, 05:40 AM
#12
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But, you're right.....this part of it is probably better saved for another forum.
02-28-09, 12:50 PM
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