Porsche pulls out of Iran, will others follow?

[Human]

[h=5]Tuesday, Apr 17th, 2012[/h]

Although not the first automaker to do so in light of the current political climate in Iran,Porsche becomes the latest automaker to officially cease doing business in the country following pressure from global groups.

The decision to cease all business in Iran by Porsche was made official by an announcement from watchdog group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which is actively campaigning to get all automakers to cease all business within Iran.

“We applaud Porsche for ending its Iran business. We are satisfied with the pledges Porsche has made, and UANI will now list Porsche as being withdrawn from Iran,” said Mark D. Wallace, UANI CEO. Porsche joins Hyundai, and Karsan for having pledged to not do business with or in Iran, but the group says it still has 11 more automakers to go: Fiat, Isuzu, Kia, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Peugeot, Renault, Suzuki, Toyota and Volvo.

It should be noted that Toyota previously announced that it would stop shipping vehicles to Iran due to the international sanctions against the nation, which was expected to involve a couple hundred vehicles. Peugeot, a popular brand in Iran, announced in March that it stopped shipping CKD kits to Iran, saying that it would do the same in April. The French automaker recently signed a global partnership with General Motors, which some believe could be the reason behind their decision to stop shipping CKD kits, but the automaker insisted it was financial instability causing the withdrawal.Peugeot has not officially ended business in or with the country of Iran at this point. If and when it does, UANI says it will remove the automaker from its list.To help achieve the goal of putting key sanctions in place against a nuclear Iran, UANI has drafted what it is calling “model legislation,” known as the DRIVE Act, which would force automakers to choose between doing business in Iran or being eligible for government contracts or financial assistance in the U.S.One automaker that is a top priority for UANI is Renault-Nissan, largely because Nissan recently won a contract to supply the “Taxi of Tomorrow” to New York City. “New York taxpayer dollars should not benefit a corporation, like Nissan, that partners with a regime that is the world’s number one state sponsor of terror and has formed an alliance with al-Qaeda,” UANI said.Nissan has not yet made a public decision regarding its intention to discontinue doing business in Iran. Renault, global partner with Nissan, doubled its production in Iran from about 50,000 to 93,578 vehicles in 2011, according to UANI, which could be one of the reasons giving Nissan reason to pause when making a decision on the matter.

Source: http://www.leftlanenews.com/porsche-pulls-out-of-iran-will-others-follow.html

 

[Centurion]

Classic politics

Western World to China: You must let your currency float and stop hogging rare earth minerals at our expense.

Western World to Iran: We may possess nuclear arms and you may not.

It's all self fulfilling.

 

[mini_cooper4]

Iran are now the new "bad guys"
It's called crowd control
United... nah I won't continue...
Good post, Centurion

 

[Giannis]

Just a reminder: We have a strict rule against politics in GCF. Let's stick to cars and only cars in this thread, or it will have to be locked!