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Traveling from the Mercedes-Benz corporate headquarters in Stuttgart to BMW's in Munich, you would have to drive eastwards, eventually down either of two autobahns. If you chose the older A8, you might cut your travel time by up to thirty minutes, otherwise choosing the A96 - by first going south, down the A7 - might take you the full complement of 2 hours and 38 minutes, a total travel distance of about 160 miles. Much of Germany's autobahns haven't speed limits, however, so your time might be even shorter, depending on your speed proclivities. But both Mercedes and BMW would argue that the trip, in either direction, is most pleasurable if done in their car. What isn't arguable, though, is that the long transatlantic trips they both made by mergers and acquisitions in the 90s and 2000s, thousands of miles from the A8 and across the Atlantic, in search of larger market shares and heavier profits, were not pleasurable at all. Both since packed their bags and trudged back to Stuttgart and Munich, with little appetite for similar further travel.