Venezuela in London: Mi cocina es tuya

Venezuela in London: Mi cocina es tuya – Café Latino, Crystal Palace

10 Dec
Posted by Zoe J. Griffiths in Eating Out, World in London

Between the pubs and print shops of Westow Street in Crystal Palace is a fantastic little restaurant serving authentic Venezuelan cuisine. Mi cocina es tuya (My kitchen is yours) bills itself as London’s only Venezuelan restaurant – perfect for our World in London series.. If you know better, let us know in the comments below!
I went to meet husband-and-wife team Alexis and Mary yesterday to sample their coffee, and find out about their unique eatery. What started as an events catering business with a stall in Camden Market now has a more stable base in this Crystal Palace restaurant. During the past three years, Alexis and Mary have served their traditional Venezuelan cuisine all over London, from the Carnaval del Pueblo to the Venezuelan Embassy. For the last seven months, they’ve been concentrating on developing Mi cocina es tuya.
The menu offers delicious-sounding empanadas (patties), asado criollo (grilled beef and rice) and arepas (corn bread with beef, chicken or cheese). The most popular dish, Alexis tells me, is the Pabellón de carne: beef, black beans, rice and fried plantains.

“At first, finding the right ingredients was difficult. For example, this hallaca is a traditional Christmas dish, but it’s wrapped in banana leaves.” He shows me an intricately bound parcel of dark green leaves. “But, you can’t just buy banana leaves in Asda! Now, we’ve found out about the right vendors in Brixton, at the market, and we can make hallaca. Similarly, you can’t get the chilli beef for Pabellon de carne in a normal supermarket. Now, we go to a Columbian butcher in Brixton. It tastes just as good as the meat in Venezuela.”

As well as the traditional food, Mary and Alexis are proud to show me their Venezuelan drinks. Mi cocina es tuya is one of the few places in London you can enjoy typical Latin drinks like Malta, Sugarcane with lemon, and Cocada, which, I’m told, is like coconut milkshake, but much nicer.

“People are often surprised that our food is like food from Trinidad and Tobago, or Caribbean food. But really, we’re from the same part of the world. Chilean, Peruvian, Columbian, all Latin American people that come here will see and recognise the products we sell.”

Indeed, as well as being a lovely place for a traditional Venezuelan breakfast of Perico (scrambled eggs with chopped tomatoes, onions and coriander, black beans, cheese and arepa, or corn bread – much healthier, I’m assured than the Traditional English they also serve), Mi cocina es tuya is also something of a Latin American deli. You can by the white or yellow “PAN” cornflour, as well as Malta drinks and other typical delicacies.
With guitars and maracas hanging from the walls, as well as plenty of gorgeous pictures of Venezuela itself, I think Mi cocina es tuya is a fantastic representation of Venezuelan London. And the wonderful hospitality of Alexis and Mary means I’ll be back for more. That, and the promise of trying some Dulce de tres leche next time!

Visit Mi cocina es tuya – Café Latino at 61 Westow Street Crystal Palace, London, SE19 3RW. If you know any other examples of Venezuelan culture in London, let us know in the comments below.

Venezuela in London: Mi cocina es tuya – Café Latino, Crystal Palace – Visit London Blog

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Snorkeling on the shore reef off the Water Villas on Rangali Island, Maldives

 
Rangali Snorkel Maldives

Rangali Snorkel Maldives

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The Dark Art of Beef - NYTimes.com

Asado Negro in the NY Times!!!

The Cheat: Dark Arts

By SAM SIFTON

This week’s recipe is a raggedy Christmas number out of Venezuela called asado negro. It requires a fat roast of beef that is simmered for a long time in dark caramel, its sweetness tempered by vinegar. The result is sticky and unctuous beneath a cloak of peppers, onions and leeks. It looks mysterious and bold on the plate and at the start of a New York winter can conjure some degree of Latin American humidity and joy.
Asado negro has its primary home in Caracas, where it is often served during the holidays, alongside fried sweet plantains and white rice, with perhaps a tart green salad for contrast. The meat is napped in blackness that comes not from fire or smoke but from the absorption of all colors into one, a color as deep as space itself.
It is beef the color of a velvet dinner jacket seen across a dark lawn at midnight. It makes mockery of pot roast. And, as we shall see, it is exceedingly simple to make.
Hold on: blackened beef? I first had the dish at a restaurant called Mohedano, a flash place in Chacao, the relatively prosperous part of Caracas that is a stronghold of opposition to Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez. The neighborhood supports restaurants and shopping centers and has plenty of gated parking lots guarded by men with guns. It recalls Miami crossed with the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with a few blocks of London and Mexico City thrown in for good measure.
Mohedano’s chef, Edgar Leal, runs the restaurant with his wife, Mariana Montero de Castro, with whom he has also had a restaurant in the United States. They served asado negro as part of a tasting menu designed to highlight the traditional flavors of cosmopolitan Venezuela.
Leal is an irrepressible figure in his restaurant, a ham who cooks with grace and precision, a character out of Stoppard, the gourmand existing within the privation of a repressive state. “It looks burned,” he said of his asado negro, laughing as he often does, as he placed the plate on a table. “But you see what you think.” Then he put on a stage whisper: “It’s not burned at all!”
The beef was cut thin, against the grain, and it glistened with moisture. The sauce cloaking it was dark and deep in flavor — with a strong, nutty sweetness, yes, but a bracing sort, far from cloying and leading only to the desire for more.
Leal cooks his asado negro with papelón, the solid block of unrefined cane sugar that is known by various names across Latin America (boiled sugar-cane pulp, essentially, formed into small blocks that can be broken into shards or grated into drinks or sauce). Papelón makes for excellent asado negro, and if you can find some at your local market — where you’ll most likely discover it listed as panela or piloncillo — go ahead and use it for your own.
But you can also cheat, which, as Chávez might say, is the way of our nation. Norman Van Aken, the Miami chef and restaurateur who has done much to bring the flavors of the Caribbean and South America to the United States, and who included a recipe for asado negro in his excellent 2003 cookbook, “New World Kitchen,” said in a telephone interview that the home cook could replicate some of the complexity of papelón by making a dark caramel out of plain white sugar and water, then adding a few teaspoons of brown sugar at the end.
“Asado negro is not a dish that’s centuries old,” Van Aken said. “As near as we could figure it in our research for the book, it goes back to the 1960s or ’70s. You can definitely mess around with it a little and make it your own.”
And so we begin with caramel, a chemistry-class lesson for the home. Sugar is dissolved in water and heated until the water evaporates and the sugar molecules break down, turning heavy and dark. Add to this sticky pool some vinegar and dry red wine, which impart savory, acidic notes to what will amount to a braising liquid, as well as some brown sugar for rustic depth. Pour the liquids carefully, for the caramel will spatter and hiss. Then allow the sauce to become whole again, stirring occasionally.
Now we sear the beef, creating a crust on the bottom of the pan that will add heft to our meal, a beefy intensity to counter the sugars and acids. Removing the meat from the pot for a moment, we sauté a great deal of garlic and onion, celery and leeks, then combine these with the seared beef and the caramel sauce under a swirl of sliced bell peppers, and push the covered whole into the oven for a few hours. Some crazy magic happens in there.
Plain white rice dressed only with a pat of butter is the best starch with which to pair this meal. You might try to locate some ripe plantains as well, to slice into coins and fry gently in oil until they turn the same golden brown as the caramel you started with. (In a pinch, you can use bananas, though they are a great deal more fragile and sweet than a ripe plantain, and require close attention in the pan, lest they turn to mush.)
Leal adds a rustic Venezuelan salad to the plate, with fresh hearts of palm, avocado and diced tomato. You might do the same, but at this time of the year, you would most likely disappoint yourself: December tomatoes in the United States are generally a grim affair, to say nothing of our canned hearts of palm and rock-hard avocados. Better to find some hothouse lettuces — Van Aken suggests something peppery in the area of watercress or arugula — and to dress these in a lime vinaigrette.
There’s a new Paul Simon song out, “Getting Ready for Christmas Day.” It’s all strummy guitar and thumping Delta blues, Simon’s muted trumpet of a voice singing about money and war, the pain of family and the release that comes to all of us somehow, religious or not, on Christmas Day. This would make a fine final accompaniment to the dinner itself, along with some dark beer or a strong zinfandel, slightly chilled.

The Dark Art of Beef - NYTimes.com

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Fantasy island FT.com / Travel

Fantasy island

By Felix Milns
Published: December 3 2010 22:56 | Last updated: December 3 2010 22:56

He may own two Formula One motor racing teams (one of which has just won the world championship) but Dietrich Mateschitz is not to be found among the champagne-swilling motorsport set in Monte Carlo. The 66-year-old Austrian businessman founded the Red Bull energy drink company, expanded it into a business with a turnover of more than €3bn and created one of the world’s most visible marketing campaigns. There are Red Bull football teams from New York to São Paulo, an aircraft racing championship and Red Bull-sponsored athletes in sports from snowboarding to surfing, cycling and canoeing.
Yet despite being a master of creating publicity for his brand, Mateschitz is known for shunning the limelight (so much so that it’s often said that he bought Austria’s leading society magazine purely so he could avoid appearing in its pages). So, when it comes to holidays, there’s only one choice – a private island.
Seven years ago, Mateschitz was on business in Fiji and was told by his lawyer that one of the country’s most exclusive islands was for sale. When he set eyes on Laucala Island, he was instantly smitten.
A mountainous 12 sq km island in Fiji’s northern Lau chain, Laucala is surrounded by a calm lagoon of the deepest blue, encircled by a reef. Its coves, curves, contours and long stretches of white sand beaches are the very essence of the South Pacific.
In private hands for more than a century, it was initially run as a coconut plantation by a British family before being sold to Malcolm Forbes, of Rich List fame, in the 1970s. Forbes kept the island as a private retreat, with a small plantation house and staff quarters, for entertaining the likes of the Rockefellers and Elizabeth Taylor, so it remained undeveloped until Mateschitz bought it from Forbes’ heirs in 2003.
Since then, Mateschitz has been developing Laucala into a paradise retreat complete with numerous high-octane boys’ toys in keeping with Red Bull’s adrenalin-fuelled image. Only 25 super-luxe villas are spread along 4.2km of coastline, all sharing facilities that could happily service a large hotel. Moored off the jetty are a dive boat, three sailboats, a waterskiing boat, a game-fishing pleasure cruiser and three lightning-fast jet skis. “The best way to get a real sense of the scale of the island is by jet ski,” says an instructor.
The diving and snorkelling are superb, with 40m-plus visibility. The island has 25 dive sites – look out for schools of hammerhead sharks – and is only a half-hour boat trip from the White Wall, Fiji’s top diving location. It is definitely worth the trip – you drift along a 60m-high wall covered in iridescent lavender and white corals before swimming through a narrow passageway into a garden of corals in a thousand shades of purples, lilacs, yellows and reds.

Incredible!!! as if they had nothing more important to do!!!! - And anyways, if bake sales are the most popular way to raise money, it must be that it is the only one that works!!!  Fools!!

Hold the brownies! Bill could limit bake sales

By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press 2 hrs 26 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Don't touch my brownies! A child nutrition bill on its way to President Barack Obama — and championed by the first lady — gives the government power to limit school bake sales and other fundraisers that health advocates say sometimes replace wholesome meals in the lunchroom.
Republicans, notably Sarah Palin, and public school organizations decry the bill as an unnecessary intrusion on a common practice often used to raise money.
"This could be a real train wreck for school districts," Lucy Gettman of the National School Boards Association said Friday, a day after the House cleared the bill. "The federal government should not be in the business of regulating this kind of activity at the local level."
The legislation, part of first lady Michelle Obama's campaign to stem childhood obesity, provides more meals at school for needy kids, including dinner, and directs the Agriculture Department to write guidelines to make those meals healthier. The legislation would apply to all foods sold in schools during regular class hours, including in the cafeteria line, vending machines and at fundraisers.
It wouldn't apply to after-hours events or concession stands at sports events.
Public health groups pushed for the language on fundraisers, which encourages the secretary of Agriculture to allow them only if they are infrequent. The language is broad enough that a president's administration could even ban bake sales, but Secretary Tom Vilsack signaled in a letter to House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., this week that he does not intend to do that. The USDA has a year to write rules that decide how frequent is infrequent.
Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest says the bill is aimed at curbing daily or weekly bake sales or pizza fundraisers that become a regular part of kids' lunchtime routines. She says selling junk food can easily be substituted with nonfood fundraisers.
"These fundraisers are happening all the time," Wootan said. "It's a pizza sale one day, doughnuts the next... It's endless. This is really about supporting parental choice. Most parents don't want their kids to use their lunch money to buy junk food. They expect they'll use their lunch money to buy a balanced school meal."
Not all see it that way.
Palin mocked the efforts last month by bringing a plate of cookies to a school speech in Pennsylvania. Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, said the federal government "has really gone too far" when it is deciding when to hold bake sales.
Some parents say they are perplexed by what the new rules might allow.
In Seminole, Fla., the Seminole High Warhawks Marching Band's booster club held a bake sale to help send the band's 173 members to this year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York. One of the bake sale's specialties: New York-style cheesecake, an homage to the destination they'd pursued for 10 years.
"Limiting bake sales is so narrow-minded," said Laura Shortway, whose 17-year-old daughter, Mallory, is a drummer in the band. "Having bake sales keeps these fundraisers community based, which is very appealing to the person making the purchase."
Several school districts and state education departments already have policies suggesting or enforcing limits on bake sales, both for nutritional reasons and to keep the events from competing for dollars against school cafeterias. In Connecticut, for instance, about 70 percent of the state's school districts have signed on to the state education department's voluntary guidelines encouraging healthy foods in place of high-sugar, high-fat options.
Under those rules, bake sales cannot be held on school grounds unless the items meet nutrition standards that specifically limit portion sizes, fat content, sodium and sugars. That two-ounce, low-fat granola bar? Probably OK, depending what's in it. But grandma's homemade oversized brownie with cream cheese frosting and chocolate chips inside? Probably not.
One loophole in Connecticut: The nutritional standards apply if the food is being sold at a bake sale, but not if it's being given away free, such as by a parent for a child's birthday.
"If a mom wants to send in cupcakes to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, that would not be subject to the state guidelines," said Thomas Murphy, a spokesman for the state's education department.
In New York City, a rule enacted in 2009 allows bake sales only once a month, and they must comply with nutritional standards and be part of a parent group fundraiser.
Wootan says she hopes the rules will prompt schools to try different options for fundraising.
"Schools are so used to doing the same fundraisers every year that they need a strong nudge to do something new," she says. "The most important rebuttal to all of these arguments is that schools can make money other ways — you don't have to harm kids health."
___
Associated Press writer Stephanie Reitz contributed to this report from Hartford, Conn.

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FT.com / Special Reports - Still a player: guitar legend Jeff Beck

Still a player: guitar legend Jeff Beck

Guitar legend: Jeff Beck

By Stephen Wilmot

Published: September 30 2010 18:01 | Last updated: September 30 2010 18:01

Most musicians are known for a particular sound, style or song. But not rock guitar legend Jeff Beck, who says the secret of his staying power has been the ability to “move on to something else”. It’s a journey that has taken him – via rock, heavy metal, jazz and soul – to his current world tour, backed by a full string orchestra.

“I’m at home with anything that’s got a groove to it,” says the ex-Yardbirds guitarist, pointing to a DVD he is making in tribute to legendary guitarist Les Paul and 1950s jazz. “I get just as much of a kick from that as I do coming up with something from tomorrow-land.”

But Beck’s taste for experimentation does not stretch to his finances – something in which he claims to have no interest but just a little “intuition”. He was almost persuaded to buy a portfolio of shares just before the financial crisis; luckily, he decided at the last minute not to sign. “It was a near-miss for me. But I said no, because I wasn’t satisfied with – or didn’t understand – what was being proposed. When people talk bank-talk, I glaze over after five minutes,” he admits.

Beck now uses the London-based private bank Duncan Lawrie, mainly because it offers a reassuringly old-fashioned experience. Lamenting the passing of the days when “you could almost have a pint with your local bank manager”, he remembers how he and his former concert manager grew frustrated with the impersonal service and “incompetence” of their high street bank. After doing research, manager settled on Duncan Lawrie and suggested Beck switch too.

“I felt nervous at first, because I didn’t really know whether I was making the right decision. But I’ve no complaints. It’s so important to have a one-to-one talk with someone at your bank. They’re handling your money, after all. You go around the world and make your money, and you want to be sure it’s being looked after.”

Beck is currently on the second leg of his world tour. He is still basking in the success of his latest album, Emotion & Commotion, which was released in April and is now up for eight Grammys. He says it is the best response that he has received since 1975, when he teamed up with Beatles producer George Martin to make the album Blow by Blow.

Fans have been particularly struck by Beck’s lush use of strings as backing for his electric guitar. “There’s no substitute for a full string orchestra,” he explains. “I was fulfilling a dream – I wanted to do it back in 1966, but couldn’t afford it. I was always impressed by people like Tina Turner and the way that kind of record was produced. It’s a beautiful sound that can only be achieved with acoustic instruments.”

Beck is also pleased with the popularity of Emotion & Commotion because singers, not instrumentalists, tend to dominate the charts. The guitarist has been wary of working too closely with singers ever since he parted ways with Rod Stewart – then the unknown lead singer of his up-and-coming band the Jeff Beck Group – back in 1969.

“Rod was a bit of a problem because his name wasn’t on the ticket, and the whole ego thing kicked off. I said if you put your name on the ticket you won’t sell any seats, but he wasn’t happy being treated as a sideman,” Beck laughs.

Stewart left to join the group the Faces, which seemed a career upset for Beck, but turned out to be liberating. “The singer problem was gone when Rod left. Rather than see that as negative, I thought: the doors are open.” He says it was working with the New York jazz-rock group Mahavishnu Orchestra in the mid-1970s that made him realise there was “life after singers”.

Beck considers the US his second home. He cites American rock and roll, blues and jazz as his original creative sources, and the US still gives him the warmest reception. It was there he spent a year in tax exile in 1977, which ironically was to pay for his English home – an Elizabethan manor house in the Sussex Weald that he fell in love with on first viewing.

“It was complete lunacy, as I didn’t know if I had the money. But when the estate agents opened the door I just wanted them gone,” he reminisces, grateful that his home turned out to be a good investment too.

Beck struggles to single out one highlight of his career, which has spanned four and a half decades and at least 10 different groups. “The big highlight is that I’m still in the business,” he says with another raucous laugh.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

FT.com / Special Reports - Still a player: guitar legend Jeff Beck

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Taking your time in Geneva - The Irish Times - Sat, Nov 13, 2010

Taking your time in Geneva

Sat, Nov 13, 2010
The Swiss city is expensive to visit but don’t let that put you off – you get what you pay for, writes Adrienne Cullen
AS YOU MIGHT expect from Switzerland, Geneva is living proof that quality of life doesn’t come cheap. While it has an almost permanent presence in the world’s top five most attractive cities, you’ll usually find it in the top five most expensive as well.
Don’t let that put you off though. Again as you might expect, you get what you pay for – in this case the buzz of a global financial centre, the sophistication of a city that’s home to a telephone book full of international organisations, and a whole lot of local history, colour, and charm as well.
Plus, you’re in the home of high-end watches. That means you get to use as many watch, clock and time-related puns and references as possible during your stay. Hey, watch it! Just a second! This transport system runs like clockwork. That chimes with me. Don’t be alarmed . . . you get the picture.
Geneva is all about its physical setting. In the background there’s the awe-inspiring vista of the snow-covered Alps, with Mont Blanc visible on a clear day. In the foreground there’s the glamorous waterfront of Lake Geneva. So not surprising-ly, the big leisure time pursuits here are sailing and skiing – sometimes both in one day.

Cohabitation et tolérance : La singularité et l'exception marocaines exaltées à Londres

Cohabitation et tolérance

La singularité et l'exception marocaines exaltées à Londres

Publié le : 11.11.2010 | 17h26

Le modèle marocain singulier s'impose dans un monde en proie aux turbulences et aux divisions, dixit le président du Musée juif de Londres. La vocation du Maroc en tant que havre de paix et terre de rencontres a été saluée à Londres à l'occasion de l'exposition «Morocco», organisée dans la capitale britannique par le musée juif de Londres en partenariat avec la Moroccan-British Society (MBS), que préside l'ambassadeur du Maroc en Grande-Bretagne, Chrifa Lalla Joumala Alaoui. La cérémonie d'inauguration de cette grandiose manifestation a été l'occasion pour de nombreuses personnalités d'exprimer leur reconnaissance au Royaume, pays qui a su depuis plusieurs siècles donner l'exemple en matière de pluralisme et de cohabitation entre les différentes cultures et religions. «Le Maroc a été, depuis des centaines d'années, un modèle de coexistence entre les adeptes des différentes religions dans un cadre marqué par le respect des valeurs de chaque communauté», a déclaré à la MAP, Lord Young, président du musée juif de Londres et Conseiller du Premier ministre britannique, David Cameron. «Ce modèle marocain singulier s'impose dans un monde en proie aux turbulences et aux divisions», a dit Lord Young, émettant le souhait de voir les autres pays suivre l'exemple de l'exception marocaine. Lord Young a tenu à souligner le rôle important que le Maroc a depuis toujours joué pour la promotion des valeurs de tolérance et pour trouver un règlement juste et durable au conflit du Moyen-Orient. Par ailleurs, Lord Young a exprimé sa gratitude à la MBS pour son partenariat et son soutien pour l'organisation de l'exposition. Rappelant que la MBS œuvre pour le renforcement des relations d'amitié et de coopération privilégiées entre le Maroc et la Grande-Bretagne, il s'est dit convaincu que la grande contribution apportée par la MBS pour la tenue de l'exposition ne manquera pas de renforcer davantage ces relations. La présence des juifs au Maroc date depuis plus de 2.000 ans, a-t-il dit, soulignant que l'exposition «Morocco» offre l'occasion propice pour rendre un hommage appuyé au Maroc, un pays où la cohabitation entre musul Lord Young a également tenu à rendre un vibrant hommage à feu S.M. Mohammed V pour la sollicitude que le défunt Souverain accordait à ses sujets de confession juive. L'exposition de Londres vise à la fois à promouvoir la diversité de la communauté juive et renforcer les relations de dialogue et de coexistence entre les différentes cultures et religions, a-t-il encore dit. Même son de cloche chez Claire Spencer, qui dirige le département Moyen-Orient/Afrique du Nord à l'Institut Royal des Affaires Internationales (Chatham House, basé à Londres), qui a relevé que l'exposition offre l'occasion de mettre en relief la place du Maroc en tant que «référence clef» en matière de relations entre différentes communautés. «Nous sommes ici pour célébrer les aspects et les dimensions culturels du Maroc au Royaume-Uni, loin de toute considération d'ordre idéologique», a-t-elle dit. De son côté, Sydney Assor, membre éminent de la communauté juive marocaine en Grande-Bretagne, a rendu hommage à l'ambassadeur du Maroc en Grande-Bretagne pour les efforts inlassables qu'elle ne cesse de déployer pour la promotion de l'image authentique du Maroc en tant que terre de paix et de rencontres. «C'est grâce à vos efforts que le public britannique aura l'occasion de découvrir la culture juive du Maroc, vieille de plusieurs siècles», a-t-il dit, réitérant l'attachement indéfectible de la communauté juive marocaine à la mère patrie et au glorieux Trône alaouite. L'exposition «Morocco», qui durera jusqu'au 6 mars 2011, représente un véritable voyage dans le temps, mettant en relief la richesse de la civilisation du Maroc et la splendeur de ses valeurs intrinsèques de tolérance et de respect de l'autre. A travers une collection de 74 photographies inédites, prises durant les années 40 et 50 par Elias Harrus, Marocain de confession juive, le visiteur découvre la vie quotidienne des juifs de l'Atlas et du sud du Maroc et leur interaction avec leurs concitoyens musulmans dans un environnement empreint de quiétude et d'enrichissement mutuel. Ces photos sont d'une importance particulière du fait que cette communauté juive a, depuis, virtuellement disparu des montagnes de l'Atlas et du sud du Maroc pour s'installer dans les grandes villes du Royaume ou immigrer à l'étranger, estime la directrice du musée juif, Rickie Burman. L'exposition comprend également des photos captées par Pauline Prior qui a revisité, à la demande du musée juif d'Amsterdam, les mêmes lieux que Harus pour transposer ce qui reste du patrimoine juif au Maroc. Le musée juif expose également des costumes traditionnels portés ou confectionnés par des juifs marocains ainsi qu'une collection de bijoux. A signaler que cet événement phare vient rappeler l'exposition exceptionnelle des textes et des livres saints des trois religions monothéistes, qui s'est tenue du 27 avril au 23 septembre 2007 au siège de la prestigieuse British Library (BL) à Londres. Tenue sous le Haut Patronage de S.M. le Roi Mohammed VI et de S.A.R. le Prince Philip, Duc d'Edimbourg, l'exposition avait réalisé un succès éclatant témoignant ainsi du rôle de premier plan que le Maroc joue dans le rapprochement entre les religions, les civilisations et les cultures. Un tel constat de succès a été souligné dans un rapport élaboré par la BL, qui a noté que l'exposition, a été l'événement le plus réussi jamais organisé par l'institution, attirant plus de 200.000 visiteurs durant cinq mois. Un sondage réalisé par l'Institut Mori a montré qu'une grande majorité des visiteurs de tout âge ont indiqué que cette exposition de portée universelle leur a permis de découvrir les multitudes de valeurs partagées par les trois religions monothéistes: l'Islam, le Christianisme et le Judaïsme. Convergence des civilisations «C'est un Maroc fort de sa diversité culturelle et riche de toutes ses histoires additionnées que l'Angleterre est invitée à découvrir», a déclaré à la MAP André Azoulay, conseiller de S.M. le Roi. «Espace privilégié de convergence des civilisations berbère, arabo-musulmane et juive, le Maroc a su résister aux mirages d'une histoire réécrite en fonction des aléas de l'instant», a dit M. Azoulay après avoir donné lecture du message adressé par S.M. le Roi Mohammed VI, que Dieu l'assiste, aux organisateurs de l'exposition sur le judaïsme marocain, inaugurée mercredi soir au siège du Musée juif de Londres. «Le message de S.M. le Roi donne sa juste mesure à la singularité, à la modernité et à la profondeur des choix faits par le Maroc pour résister aux tentations du repli», a ajouté le conseiller de S.M. le Roi, en mettant en relief la détermination des communautés juives marocaines, où qu'elles se trouvent, pour «afficher, promouvoir et protéger leurs racines marocaines et leur mobilisation effective aux côtés du Maroc». Par MAP

Cohabitation et tolérance : La singularité et l'exception marocaines exaltées à Londres

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Henry Ford and Air Conditioning

Ford, AC and the Jewish brothers

snopes.com: Henry Ford and Air Conditioning 

 

Variations: Different versions of this joke use a variety of Jewish-sounding last names for the brothers, including Katz, Rosenberg, and Goldberg.

Origins: This bit of humor is another well-traveled item that should be easily recognizable as a joke but is nonetheless frequently mailed to us for verification.

It was a sweltering August day in 1937 when the Cohen brothers entered the posh Dearborn, Michigan, offices of Henry Ford, the car maker. "Mr. Ford," announced Norman Cohen, the eldest of the three. "We have a remarkable invention that will revolutionize the automobile industry."

Ford looked skeptical, but their threat to offer it to the competition kept his interest piqued. "We would like to demonstrate it to you in person."

After a little cajoling, they brought Mr. Ford outside and asked him to enter a black automobile parked in front of the building.

Hyman Cohen, the middle brother, opened the door of the car. "Please step inside, Mr. Ford."

"What!" shouted the tycoon, "Are you crazy? It must be two hundred degrees in that car!"

"It is," smiled the youngest brother, Max, "but sit down Mr. Ford, and push the white button."

Intrigued, Ford pushed the button. All of a sudden a whoosh of freezing air started blowing from vents all around the car, and within seconds the automobile was not only comfortable, it was quite cool.

"This is amazing!" exclaimed Ford. "How much do you want for the patent?"

Norman spoke up, "The price is one million dollars." Then he paused. "And there is something else: The name 'Cohen Brothers Air-Conditioning' must be stamped right next to the Ford logo!"

"Money is no problem," retorted Ford, "but no way will I have a Jewish name next to my logo on my cars!'

They haggled back and forth for a while and finally they settled. Five million dollars, but the Cohens' name would be left off. However, the first names of the Cohen brothers would be forever emblazoned upon the console of every Ford air conditioning system.

And that is why, even today, whenever you enter a Ford vehicle, you will see those three names clearly printed on the air conditioning control panel: NORM, HI and MAX

o BonusUndoubtedly the use of specific names and dates (somewhat unusual in this form of humor) misleads some readers into interpreting it as a real-life anecdote rather than a joke. More important, although the story requires no additional

explanation to be seen as funny, its key element is a historical context that may be lost on younger readers.

The missing context is that Henry Ford was a notorious anti-Semite who believed Jews were behind an international banking conspiracy intent upon seizing control of the world's financial systems and destroying American manufacturing. He devoted whole pages of his 1923 autobiography, My Life and Work, to disparaging Jews. He bought the Dearborn Independent in 1919 and turned that newspaper into an outlet for running full-length articles (and later whole issues) attacking the "Jewish banking conspiracy." He presumed the hoax booklet The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion — a forgery concocted to stir up hatred of Jews by furnishing proof that Jewish leaders were secretly planning to attain world domination — was real and serialized it in his newspaper, where installments were run for 91 weeks under the headline "The International Jew."

So, this joke is more than just a tale of three inventors who manage to cleverly sneak their names onto someone else's product; it's also a put-down of Henry Ford and his anti-Semitism. Not only do three Jewish inventors arrange a way to

display their names in every car produced by Ford despite his unyielding objections to placing "Jewish names" on his product, they manipulate him into agreeing to a quintupled price (a staggering $5 million) under the belief that his paying extra millions of dollars will keep their names off his automobiles.

Yet even minus the historical context of Henry Ford's feelings about Jews, the story works for the same reason the $250 cookie recipe legend does — at its heart, it's a tale of the little guy's successfully taking on the large corporation and winning. We like tales in which the underdog comes out on top because such stories leave open the possibility that maybe when it's our turn to go up against the big guys, we too might win. At the very least, such stories foster a sense of hope. In this case, that the underdogs succeed through a bit of sneakiness seems nothing but appropriate because we don't view them as having been fairly treated.

For the record, as far as we know the first American automobile in which factory- installed air conditioning was offered as an option was the 1940 Packard.

Last updated: 18 June 2010 The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/humor/jokes/ford.asp

Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2010 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson. This material may not be reproduced without permission. snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.

Sources:

Brinkley, Douglas. Wheels for the World. New York: Viking, 2003. ISBN 0-670-03181-X (pp. 258-263).

Dickinson, Rachel. "A Cool History." The Christian Science Monitor. 6 August 2002

Pontiac Falls From Muscle Car Glory to Graveyard - NYTimes.com

October 29, 2010

Pontiac Falls From Muscle Car Glory to Graveyard

By NICK BUNKLEY

DETROIT — Pontiac, the brand that invented the muscle car under its flamboyant engineer John Z. DeLorean, helped Burt Reynolds elude Sheriff Justice in “Smokey and the Bandit” and taught baby boomers to salivate over horsepower, but produced mostly forgettable cars for their children, will endure a lonely death on Sunday after about 40 million in sales.

It was 84 years old. The cause of death was in dispute. Fans said Pontiac’s wounds were self-inflicted, while General Motors blamed a terminal illness contracted during last year’s bankruptcy. Pontiac built its last car nearly a year ago, but the official end was set for Oct. 31, when G.M.’s agreements with Pontiac dealers expire.

“They were C.P.R.-ing a corpse for a long time,” said Larry Kummer, a retired graphic artist who has owned more than two dozen Pontiacs and runs the Web site PontiacRegistry.com.

The G.M. brand that was advertised for “driving excitement,” Pontiac brought Americans the Bonneville, GTO, Firebird and other venerable nameplates. Sportier than a Chevrolet but less uppity than an Oldsmobile or Buick, the best Pontiacs, recognizable by their split grille and red arrowhead emblem in the middle, were stylish yet affordable cars with big, macho engines.

Its biggest triumph was the GTO, developed by Mr. DeLorean, the brand’s rebellious chief engineer, in violation of a G.M. policy dictating the maximum size of a car’s engine. The GTO was a hit, and the age of the muscle car had begun.

“When the muscle-car era was in its heyday, Pontiac was king,” said Frederick Perrine, a dealer in Cranbury, N.J., whose family sold Pontiacs since the brand’s founding. “It put us through school. We were the house on the block that had the swimming pool growing up.”

Ed Dieffenbach, a retired police officer, recalls admiring Pontiacs in magazines as a boy but he never bought one. But with the brand nearing death, he drove 1,300 miles last week from his home near Miami to the Lee Pontiac GMC dealership in Florida’s panhandle to trade in his Chevrolet Silverado truck for one of the last new Solstice two-seater coupes available anywhere in the country.

“I always wanted a hot rod, but never got around to it, so this is it,” Mr. Dieffenbach, 62, said after getting his new car home. “My wife sat in it last night and said, ‘Oh my Lord, wow.’ ”

For most of the 1960s, Pontiac ranked third in sales behind Chevy and Ford — a position now held by Toyota.

But in the decades since, Pontiac’s edge and high-powered image wore off. Repeated efforts in the 1990s and 2000s to revive the brand failed. Drivers too young to remember the GTO came to associate Pontiac with models like the DustBuster-shaped Trans Sport minivan or the Aztek, a bloated-looking crossover widely regarded as one of the ugliest vehicles of all time.

By early 2009, Pontiac had fallen to 12th place in the United States market, and its top-selling model was the G6, a sedan commonly found on car-rental lots.

Pontiac, named for the Michigan city where the company started and an 18th-century Ottawa Indian chief, found itself on the wrong end of G.M.’s government-aided bankruptcy restructuring.

“They had a lot of glory years, but from the ’70s on, Pontiac just couldn’t meet the bar,” Mr. Kummer said. “It was always living in the past.”

For the most part, Pontiac’s final months generated no more excitement than its last few decades did. G.M. said dealers had fewer than 125 new Pontiacs in stock at the end of August, mostly heavily discounted G6’s, but only eight of them were reported sold in September.

“You hate to see them go, but they were floundering and couldn’t find their place in the market,” said Tim Dye, who owns 21 Pontiacs from various eras and a huge collection of Pontiac memorabilia — started with a bottle of GTO cologne from his uncle — that he had assembled over more than 30 years.

Mr. Dye’s home in Oklahoma, along with two buildings on his property, are filled with thousands of items from Pontiac’s past, including showroom brochures, advertising posters, model cars, pencils, ashtrays and matchbooks. Now that Pontiac is gone, Mr. Dye plans to turn his collection into a museum in Pontiac, Ill., a city on Route 66.

“I can’t think of anything better to do than just visit with people about Pontiac every day,” he said.

The Pontiac Motor Division was born at G.M. in 1926 as a single model under the Oakland brand, but its roots date to the 1890s, when horse-drawn carriage-making was a big industry in Pontiac, 25 miles northwest of Detroit. The Pontiac Spring and Wagon Works started building automobiles in 1907, before merging with the nearby Oakland Motor Car Company, which was then bought by G.M. in 1909.

G.M.’s first Pontiac was an $825 model known as the “Chief of the Sixes” for its 6-cylinder engine. It sold so well that G.M. shut down Oakland to focus on Pontiacs.

Pontiac became known as a conservative brand, building stodgy cars for grandmothers, until its general manager in the late 1950s, Semon Knudsen, sought a hipper image and much younger buyer. Mr. Knudsen, the son of a former G.M. president and a fan of auto racing, unveiled Pontiac’s “wide-track” design, which improved the cars’ handling by pushing the wheels five inches farther apart.

Mr. Knudsen, known as Bunkie, was once quoted describing wide-track Pontiacs as resembling “a football player wearing ballet slippers.” The style was distinctive, and Pontiac’s frequent wins on the racetrack in that era helped sales soar.

No innovation did as much for Pontiac’s high-performance image as the GTO, whose glory days were from 1964 to 1974. The original GTO’s 389 cubic-inch engine was larger than G.M. allowed in a car of that size, but Pontiac executives got around that rule by offering it as an upgrade package to an existing model, the Tempest, and no one at the corporate level was aware of the option before it went into production and dealers began clamoring for more.

“We got 5,000 of them out into the marketplace before we got around to telling the corporation what we were doing,” said Jim Wangers, a Pontiac advertising executive at the time who worked with Mr. DeLorean to create the GTO, short for Gran Turismo Omologato.

Mr. Wangers, who was born the same year as Pontiac and never thought he would outlive it, recalls the time that the German luxury carmaker BMW sent a team of engineers, designers and marketers to meet with Mr. DeLorean’s team and study how the brand did so well.

But Pontiac sales peaked in 1973, when 920,000 were sold, and the ride was mostly downhilll after that. Pontiac fans lament that the brand finally got a few worthy models in its final years — the G8 full-size sedan and the Solstice sports car — but by then it was too far gone.

Gary Lee Jr., an owner of the dealership that sold Mr. Dieffenbach his Solstice this week, remembers the sadness of losing Oldsmobile when G.M. killed that brand in 2004. But with Pontiac, he has just been eager to move on. Signs for Pontiac at his dealership had long been removed, and he said, thankfully, he had no more new Pontiacs to unload.

“It was a great line,” Mr. Lee said, “while it lasted.”

Pontiac Falls From Muscle Car Glory to Graveyard - NYTimes.com

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Just Say "Yes!" Legalizing Drugs Is Good for Society ... and the Economy, Harvard Prof. Says

California residents will vote in November on whether or not to legalize marijuana. If they do vote "yes," says Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron, that should only be the beginning.

All drugs should be legalized nationwide, Miron says. Pot, cocaine, LSD, crystal-meth --- you name it.

"Legalizing drugs would save roughly $41.3 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. Of these savings, $25.7 billion would accrue to state and local governments, while $15.6 billion would accrue to the federal government," Miron claims in a recent Cato Institute report he co-authored.

According to their website, "The report also estimates that drug legalization would yield tax revenue of $46.7 billion annually, assuming legal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco. Approximately $8.7 billion of this revenue would result from legalization of marijuana and $38.0 billion from legalization of other drugs."But won't we become a nation of drug addicts?

No, says Miron. Walk down any city street and you can already buy legal drugs in multiple establishments: Caffeine at Starbucks, nicotine at the supermarket, alcohol at bars and restaurants. And we're not ALL addicted to all of these drugs.

Our current drug policy doesn't work, Miron observes. Despite ~$40 billion spent on enforcement and prosecution, drug use is still widespread. Meanwhile, because the products are illegal, they're dangerous, low-quality, and unregulated, and they generate zero tax revenue.

Legalizing drugs would solve those problems, Miron says. It would help close the budget deficit. And it would eliminate a bizarre double standard, in which Americans are encouraged to drink and smoke themselves to death -- while guzzling addictive coffee and tea -- but become criminals if they dare to get stoned.By the way, here are 10 ways to invest in the drug-legalization trend.

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/535480/Just-Say-"Yes!"-Legalizing-Drugs-Is-Good-for-Society-...-and-the-Economy,-Harvard-Prof.-Says?tickers=sam,bud,pph,xph,mrk,jnj

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BMW's Ultimate Driving Machine Is a Tiny Little Electric Car - BusinessWeek

BMW's Ultimate Driving Machine Is a Tiny Little Electric Car

BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer knows the future is about more than high-performance suburban status symbols

By Chris Reiter

When former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived for lunch with BMW Chief Executive Officer Norbert Reithofer in late 2008, she brought along an unexpected guest, Joschka Fischer, a one-time left-wing radical. In the early 1970s, Fischer was fired from GM's Opel unit for trying to organize a communist revolution among his fellow workers, and in 1973 he was photographed clubbing a police officer in a street protest. Later, disavowing violence, he entered mainstream politics, rising to prominence in the Green Party and serving as German foreign minister from 1998 to 2005.
Now he has a new job. After that lunch, Reithofer hired both Fischer and Albright to help BMW win support within the company and around the world for its Megacity Vehicle. Battery-powered, and built of carbon fiber and aluminum, it is meant to win BMW a place in the fastest-growing markets—sprawling urban megalopolises.
"The Megacity Vehicle is a must-have for BMW," says Reithofer at the company's landmarked headquarters in Munich. Reithofer, who has been at BMW for 23 years, is an unprepossessing man of 54, rarely seen in anything but a dark, three-button suit, with all three buttons fastened. He lives in the same modest Bavarian village where he was born. He owns a beagle. But with this new vehicle, Reithofer is attempting something radical, pushing BMW beyond its core strengths of speed and style, and toward solving different problems, like global warming, oil depletion, and the shift in growth from the West to the East. China is, in a sense, the ultimate destination, a land of exponentially growing megacities—and the pollution, traffic snarls, and huge spending power that come with them.
Reithofer's challenge is to secure a place for BMW in this new world without sacrificing its status as a rarefied drive for the open road. "We don't see threats; we see opportunities," says Adrian van Hooydonk, an 18-year BMW veteran whom Reithofer installed as design chief last year. "That's an indication of how this company thinks and the kind of energy that Dr. Reithofer brings to the company. 'It is what you make of it,' that's what he always says."
Inside BMW, the Megacity message didn't immediately resonate with all of BMW's horsepower-driven managers. Their resistance is understandable: BMW is doing quite well as is, building beautiful cars that go fast. In 2005, it bested archrival Daimler's (DAI) Mercedes-Benz in sales, and the company has come roaring out of the recession, expecting to sell 1.4 million vehicles this year, just off its 2007 peak, while raising margins to 6.6 percent. With both the trendy Mini badge and Rolls-Royce's silver lady under BMW control, the Bavarian manufacturer is on more solid footing than at any time in its 94-year history. Despite its success, however, BMW is still a much smaller company than its rivals. It lacks the giant bus and truck operations that allow Mercedes to amortize research costs. Volkswagen, with a stable of 10 brands including Bentley, Porsche, and the aggressive Audi nameplate, sells nearly five times as many cars as BMW and has vowed to topple it as the biggest premium automaker by 2015. "Because of its size, BMW can't allow itself any mistakes," says Stefan Bratzel, director of the Center of Automotive at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch-Gladbach, Germany, and a former manager at Daimler's Smart unit. "If the Megacity Vehicle doesn't work, BMW will have considerably less room to maneuver."
Reithofer grew up in Penzberg, a former coal-mining town about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Munich. Living a short distance from the house where he was born, he's stayed in the area to be close to family and the Alps, where he unwinds by skiing and mountain biking. After studying machine tools and operating science under Joachim Milberg, BMW's former CEO and current chairman, he joined BMW in 1987 as head of maintenance planning. Later he moved to South Africa as technical director of BMW's plant in Rosslyn. From 1997 to 2000 he managed BMW's factory in Spartanburg, S.C., where the company manufactures the X5 and X6 lines of sport-utility vehicles. He credits his stint in the U.S. with streamlining his management style.
"In the U.S., I learned to take quick decisions and not hold long speeches," he says. "When I got back to Munich, it struck me right away how long it took to make decisions, but we've changed that now."
Part of his plan for the Megacity project has been to leave some of the long speeches to Albright and Fischer. The two spoke separately to auditoriums filled with hundreds of BMW executives and engineers, discussing trends like urbanization and global warming that threaten to make BMW's athletic sedans obsolete. The result has been a groundswell of enthusiasm for the electric-car program, which came out of Project i, BMW's internal think tank for the future of transport.
Ulrich Kranz, a former Mini developer, runs Project i, and says more people want to work for the unit than he can hire. Project i has grown from a handful of diverse experts in late 2007 to a team of more than 250 people, as BMW readies for the launch of the Megacity Vehicle in 2013. "Reithofer has provided more than 100 percent support," says Kranz. "He is an absolutely enthusiastic motivator."
He's also a listener, and that helped BMW navigate the financial crisis without slipping into the red. In late August 2007, on a routine swing through the U.S., Reithofer met for a light lunch with a half dozen of BMW's top American dealers. The meeting at the carmaker's customer center near its factory in Spartanburg was upbeat; sales were heading for a record that year. When conversation turned to prospects for 2008, however, the salesmen voiced concern about credit markets and warned that problems in the subprime market could spill over and hurt demand.
Reithofer could have been forgiven for ignoring the warning. It was after all more than a year before Lehman Brothers' failure set off the financial crisis. Instead, when he returned to Munich, he started putting crisis plans in place. The early warning helped BMW scale back production quickly, which prevented a glut of unwanted cars eating up cash and depressing prices. The company trimmed 11,000 workers from its payrolls through attrition and buyouts, and reduced hours for another 25,000, but was able to get through the crisis without layoffs.
Reithofer also used the crisis to reduce purchasing expenses and lower development costs, hoping to move profit margins to at least 8 percent by 2012. "The crisis accelerated the process," says Reithofer, who personally test drives competitors' vehicles and visits dealers anonymously to get an unfiltered view of his company. "We're farther along than we otherwise would have been," he says. That progress is reflected in the company's stock performance. The shares have risen 50 percent this year, outperforming Daimler's 20 percent advance and Volkswagen's 40 percent gain.
"Reithofer was very underrated when he came in, but he's since become one of the most respected CEOs in the industry," says Philippe Houchois, an analyst with UBS (USB) in London. "He's not flashy but rather an inside guy who gets the work done."
Reithofer's strategy is based on maintaining BMW's independence, keeping in mind the rescue funded by Herbert Quandt, who had inherited a stake in BMW from his father. In 1959, BMW was losing money and needed cash to develop a mid-market car. Mercedes' parent, then called Daimler-Benz, made an offer for BMW, which was rejected by Quandt because of opposition by the workforce and small shareholders. Quandt scraped enough money together to provide BMW a life line, and today his descendants still own nearly 47 percent of the carmaker. Says Reithofer, "The advantage of our major shareholder is—among other things—that they give us the stability to think long-term."
The long view has pushed BMW to build electric vehicles and the smaller cars that will be needed in the new urban world. BMW staff traveled to Tokyo, Mexico City, and Los Angeles, among others, to talk to mayors, city planners, and even regular folks, whom they followed on their commutes and into their homes to see how they lived and traveled. They determined that a car still had a place in crowded cities as a symbol of individuality and refuge from the bustle, but it had to be sustainable.
Tom Mouloghney, a new kind of a car nut, exemplifies the new BMW culture. Though he has a Porsche Boxster in his garage and a DeLorean in his past, he has gone electric and isn't going back.
"It's my intention to have at least one electric vehicle from now on; I hope the options are available," says Moloughney, who pays $600 a month in the second year of a lease of one of BMW's electric-powered Mini E test vehicles. "I don't see any way around us having to reduce our dependence on oil."
Moloughney installed solar panels on the roof to generate electricity for his daily 60-mile commute between his Italian restaurant in the New Jersey suburbs of New York and his home in rural Chester. Explaining the extent of his commitment, he cites energy independence, cost savings, and environmental concerns.
"What people like about this car is that it has no oil, so it's not hurting the economy, it's not hurting the environment, and it's not supporting countries that are not friendly to the U.S.," says Moloughney, who has a bumper sticker that says "Starve a terrorist! Drive Electric!" on his Mini. His license plate reads EF-OPEC.
There are many contestants, of course, in the race to build an electric car. Later this year, Nissan Motor will introduce the battery-powered Leaf, and General Motors will launch the electric Chevrolet Volt, which extends its range with a gas generator. More of a threat to BMW is Daimler, which has a broader development pipeline. A battery-powered A-Class compact will debut at the Paris Motor Show later this month, adding to fuel-cell buses on the streets of Hamburg, electric-powered Vito vans in Stuttgart, and a test fleet of 1,500 battery-powered Smarts in places such as Berlin, Paris, Rome, and London. The view from Munich is that the rivals are pedestrian.
"Since we're BMW, we don't want to create just any old electric car," says design chief van Hooydonk. "We want to deliver what people so far think is impossible: the combination of joy and zero emissions."
Though the Mini is popular and seems to carry some component of joy, the electric version of the car is nothing special technically. The rushed project pushed out in 2008 is a simple conversion, which placed more than 5,000 laptop batteries where the back seat is supposed to be.
BMW also has a checkered past with alternative fuels. The company spent years developing hydrogen-combustion technology, using hard-to-handle liquid hydrogen, which needs to be cooled to minus 253 degrees Celsius, just 20 degrees above absolute zero, to become a fluid. BMW showcased the technology in 2007 by outfitting 100 of its 7-Series sedans with bulky hydrogen tanks; the fuel, however, boiled away despite insulation equivalent to 17 meters (55 feet) of Styrofoam.
Perhaps the most daring part of Reithofer's plan for the Megacity is that he expects to make money with the car, despite the use of costly materials like lightweight aluminum and carbon fiber. The company has set up a $100 million factory near Seattle, together with partner SGL Group, to make the carbon fiber for the car's passenger safety cell. The use of carbon fiber is key to BMW's strategy for the Megacity, which will be big enough for four people and be marketed under a new BMW subbrand. Because the material is 50 percent lighter than steel, the carbon fiber will reduce the size and cost of the battery needed to move the car. Until now the automotive use of carbon fiber has been limited to Formula 1 race cars and other high-performance autos, where price isn't an issue. But BMW insists it can mass-market carbon fiber components, which will be glued together to form the safety cell. In addition, BMW is preparing a new test vehicle—the ActiveE, a converted 1 Series coupe—which will have lithium-ion battery packs developed by BMW and its partners Samsung SDI and Robert Bosch, as well as new electric motors.
BMW is also planning to expand its conventional business, adding more small cars to its namesake brand and expanding the Mini line with at least a roadster and coupe. It is, too, considering a new factory to support demand in Russia, India, and other emerging economies. All told, the company is looking to sell more than 2 million cars annually by 2020, an increase of 55 percent over 2009.
"I would have decided to produce the Megacity Vehicle even if, contrary to our expectations, it doesn't make money in the first generation," says Reithofer, who hasn't been afraid to break with traditions such as adding front-wheel drive models to the BMW brand, exiting Formula 1 auto racing, and linking with rival Mercedes to save purchasing costs. "As a leader, you can either be an entrepreneur or an administrator. I see myself as an entrepreneur."
When Reithofer shuttles between Penzberg and Munich, he surges down the A95, a speed-limit-free stretch of highway that begs for a car like his 12-cylinder 7-Series. But his view these days looks past the surrounding Bavarian countryside and toward the crowded avenues of Shanghai and Mumbai. Those streets demand a different type of car.

Chris Reiter is a reporter for Bloomberg News.

BMW's Ultimate Driving Machine Is a Tiny Little Electric Car - BusinessWeek