BMW and Mercedes Set Aside Decades of Rivalry
- Tongue-in-cheek clip from rival BMW shows Zetsche in an i8 car
- BMW thanks Zetsche for ‘many years of inspiring competition’
Dieter Zetsche, outgoing chief executive officer of Daimler AG
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Retirement means harvesting the fruits of lifelong labor, trying out new things, and not giving a damn what others think. For Daimler AG Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche, who stepped down on Wednesday, that spells out as a three-letter word: BMW.
In a clip distributed on BMW AG’s Twitter feed, a camera follows a Zetsche lookalike -- complete with signature walrus mustache and rimless spectacles -- around on his last day at work: there’s Zetsche handing in his work badge at the front desk, bidding farewell to employees in the lobby with a few selfies, before being whisked back home by a chauffeured black Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedan.