A wry smile flits across Harald Krüger’s face. The chairman of BMW picks his words carefully. Will the car maker shift production from the UK if Brexit penalises trade between Britain and Germany? “BMW is flexible,” comes the loaded reply. “What I would like to see is a pragmatic solution that ensures business is competitive in the future.”
Trim, dressed in a grey suit, white shirt, tightly knotted blue tie and black Oxfords, Krüger could pass for a middle-ranking insurance executive. He is sitting in a meeting room at the Frankfurt motor show, far enough down a corridor to muffle the pounding music and revving exhausts that are the soundtrack to this biennial gathering of petrolheads.
Krüger was just 49 when he took over from