Hello and welcome to Business Daily. I'm Theo Leggett. In today's programme, we're looking at Germany's

car industry, once a shining symbol of the country's economic success, but now grappling with

high costs, poor sales and growing competition from abroad. I'm in Wollsberg, home of Volkswagen,

Europe's biggest carmaker,

and I'm here to ask, have the brakes finally come on for the once mighty German motor industry?

And with elections looming, can anything be done to get it back up to speed in a rapidly changing market?

Thank you. changing market. When you step off the train at Walsberg Central Station, the first thing you see is the

Volkswagen factory.

Its huge facade facade with its four

tall chimneys and giant Volkswagen logo dominates one bank of the canal that runs through the city.

This isn't just a town with a car plant. It's a car plant with a town that's grown up around it.

The factory was originally established to build the Nazi era Strength Through Joy People's Car

that ultimately became the much-loved Volkswagen Beetle.

A Volkswagen.

A man would have.

A really,

a fictigen,

wealth-bustendian Volkswagen.

The town was constructed to house its workers.

Today the factory covers more than six and a half square kilometers.

It employs more than 60,000 people from across Lower Saxony.

Walsberg itself has a population of just 120,000.

...