Changing Gears - All things considered, Zee Germans had a pretty good July!

All things considered, Zee Germans had a pretty good July! Fanhansa – I mean Lufthansa – carried a very important piece of freight from Brazil back to Germany recently. Incidentally, the German airline did actually replace the familiar Lufthansa name on the fuselage of eight of its jumbo jets with the specially developed ‘Fanhansa’ logo. They obviously subscribe to former English footballer and BBC Sport presenter, Gary Lineker’s views on the game. “Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and, at the end, the Germans always win,” is his oft-repeated quote from the 1990 World Cup. They’re having reasonable success in other sports as well. The Germans will almost certainly win the F1 world championships this year – both for the constructor and driver by the looks of it. Outside the realm of sport, they’re not doing too badly either. Germany is clearly the engine of the European Union – an accurate description of which could be, ‘The EU: A politico-economic Union in which you report directly to Angela Merkel.’ The very magazine that you hold in your hands is further proof, if any was needed, that Germanic precision just works! And I’m not alluding to the fact that it was printed on a Heidelberg machine, what I’m referring to are the big three German automakers who dominate the cover of this issue. Why? Because they make the best-engineered cars on the planet – plain and simple! For precision and exactitude, no one even comes close. They accept nothing less than perfection – much like the German football team that made eleven of the finest (well, with the exception of a couple) Brazilian footballers look like fumbling school children. Forget about the cover of this issue, car magazines themselves wouldn’t exist if Karl Benz hadn’t invented the motorcar in 1885. And mass transport would look quite different if Rudolf Diesel hadn’t invented a compression-ignition engine bearing his name around the same time. So, you really do have to ask yourself, does it matter if they don’t have much of a sense of humour – they’re laughing all the way to the bank while the rest of us pretend to take comfort from laughing at ourselves…