It doesn't get much more symbolic.
The manufacturer of the Mercedes stars is closing.
154 employees who, among other things, also produced radiator grilles for BMW are on the street, more than half of them are said to have been unskilled workers.
That was it for the supplier BIA Forst, a subsidiary of BIA in Solingen.
Christian Muessgens
Business correspondent in Hamburg.
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Henning Peitsmeier
Business correspondent in Munich.
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Gustave parts
Business correspondent in Stuttgart.
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The news didn't make any big headlines this fall.
Some small businesses just don't make it, that's how it is in a market economy.
Such bankruptcies take place far below the public perception threshold.
But therein lies the danger.
Because jobs have been disappearing in the auto industry for years, step by step, every year.
One crisis follows the next: pandemic, semiconductors, war in Ukraine, inflation, transport costs, commodity prices, energy.
And all this while the industry says goodbye to the combustion engine after a century and has to figure out how to approach the electric age and who will play what role in it.
If you ask around in Germany's most important economic sector these days and ask about the situation of smaller companies, it becomes clear: the situation is coming to a head dramatically.
Bankruptcies coming?
The answer of the experts is not yes or no, but the counter-question: When does it become a wave?
For almost everyone there is no question that insolvencies will increase in the coming year.
The number of people employed in the auto industry has fallen by around 50,000 in the past four years.
That's a loss of more than 6 percent.
There are still almost 800,000, but the gradual decline could accelerate this winter.
And especially for those below the threshold of perception, the small and medium-sized companies that represent a large part of the industry.
A total of almost 300,000 employees in Germany work for automotive suppliers, more than half of them in companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.
Nothing but small and medium-sized manufacturers, the often invoked backbone of the German economy.
Companies like BIA Forest.
"The size makes the difference, some smaller ones won't make it," predicts the CEO of a large supplier.
He warns that a number of suppliers have too few reserves.
And while the global players would have an abundance of cheap energy in their factories in the USA and China, the domestic companies without international integration would have serious liquidity problems.
Only working in Germany turns out to be a huge concentration of risk.
In a survey conducted by the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) in the summer, around ten percent of the companies surveyed admitted to having liquidity problems.
Another third expected financial bottlenecks in the coming months.
"The coming year will not be easy, especially for small and medium-sized companies," says Joachim Exner, an experienced insolvency administrator who has repeatedly accompanied struggling automotive suppliers.
"I expect that we will see more bankruptcies from automotive suppliers."
Beck and partners warn many.
“Many companies do not have the financial resources for the necessary conversion.
In recent years, the margins have been so low that they have not been able to build up a cushion," says insolvency administrator Volker Böhm from the large law firm Schultze & Braun in Achern, Baden.