Mission Control

The Winds Of Change Are Fast Upon The Car Industry And Things Will Never Be This Slow Again, Says Britta Seeger Of Mercedes-Benz.

- Stephen Corby

Some days at work are tougher than others, particularly if you have to travel a lot, but when your company car has just been run over by a tank and you’re lying on a cold floor with a machine gun pointed at your head, it’s got to be right up at the rougher end of the scale.

For Britta Seeger, the only female member of the board at car giant Mercedes-Benz, a woman with more than 30,000 staff under her, and three kids at home, her day – at Istanbul airport during a military coup in 2016 – was only about to get more difficult.

“We’d just landed and we were going through immigration and, suddenly, we couldn’t get out. There were soldiers with guns and we were lying on the floor, trying to protect ourselves,” Seeger, 46, recalls.

“At this exact moment, my son was calling me on the mobile to tell me he’s watching the news on TV and he’s worried and wants to make sure I’m all right.”

She pauses at this point, to blow air slowly out her lips, recalling the mix of helplessness, fear and responsibility she felt at the time.

“And I said, ‘Yes, I’m fine. I’m all good. I’ll call you tomorrow when I have more time,’” she adds.

“You have to stay focused in situations like that, you have to understand the step-by-step moves to get out of the situation. But it was scary and, after I was told my car had been rolled over by a tank, I was a bit shocked. But everything was good in the end, we got out.”