What does Tesla's stock market triumph have to do with the classic car?
07/05/2020
Unfortunately nothing, would be the honest answer to the question of whether Tesla has anything to do with classic cars. Tesla has neither tradition nor a long history. The company has only been around for 17 years. And yet Tesla is now worth almost 200 billion euros on the stock market, more than the largest German car manufacturers Daimler, Volkswagen and BMW combined. And Tesla is also worth more than Toyota and every other car brand.
So with just four or five models, Elon Musk's American company has managed to build up more trust among shareholders than, for example, Daimler-Benz with a history of over 100 years and countless innovations and successes. Tesla doesn't do racing either and the brand is at the bottom of the JD Power customer satisfaction index.
But there have been highly acclaimed and adored car brands before. If the stock market in the early 1960s had functioned in a similar way to today, then perhaps Borgward or Glas would also have achieved higher market valuations than BMW, Mercedes-Benz or Auto Union. After all, these up-and-coming car manufacturers were also regarded as innovative and adept at identifying niches. They produced good cars that customers wanted to buy.
Who knows, perhaps Glas and/or Borgward could have written German automotive history differently than it ultimately did in the slipstream of rapidly rising share prices. But Glas and Borgward ultimately failed, and the traditional companies won. Will Tesla end the same way?
