Hints and tips:
...In the early 1980s, Volkswagen chair Carl Hahn dispatched his engineers to start manufacturing VW’s boxy Santana sedans in Shanghai....
...A significant majority are German. Everybody smokes....
...The VW Santana was the best-selling car in China for a decade, after which the Jetta model took the number one spot....
...After dinner we all trooped out on to the terrace to admire a sky turning the same shade of dusky pink as the Mexican rosado in our glasses....
...Half Puerto Rican, one quarter African-American and one quarter German, Rivera found her ethnic background useful on the audition circuit in LA....
...The German carmaker, which already builds Santana saloons at its factory in the regional capital of Urumqi, will start producing Tharu sport utility vehicles there next year....
...He points out that this was a “tough thing to do” given the failures of previous attempts by Santana and ESPN. “Before, they were essentially one-trick ponies,” he says....
...Red Volkswagen Santana taxis became a common sight on Chinese streets. The taxis put the Volkswagen brand in the public eye....
...Ahead of the auto show in Shanghai last month, Volkswagen celebrated with Saic the 30th anniversary of the first Chinese-built VW Santana....
...Andrade is selling a four-bedroom house in Porto Moniz for €380,000 and a stone-built three-bedroom house in São Jorge, near Santana, for €435,000....
...Industry consultants will this year crown VW as the world’s biggest carmaker, but the German company must fight hard to fend off Toyota, General Motors and Hyundai in order to keep the title in the years...
...The German group at one stage sold about 50 per cent of the cars in China, which in the early 1990s provided a large chunk of the group’s profits....
...Not so: the Germans still win the big one and China is a huge potential market for pigeon-sellers....
...The announcement by Shanghai Volkswagen that it would cut prices by up to 14 per cent was the latest attempt by the German carmaker to maintain its position as the leading brand in the Chinese market....
...Aduet between a Japanese electronics manufacturer and a German book publisher struck some outsiders as an unlikely one....
...A seasonal visit to Pedro Santana Lopes, the man Barroso hand-picked as his successor, is unlikely to be an occasion for mirth or merrymaking. Santana Lopes handed in his resignation on Monday....
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