> I don't think BMW, with their slogan "The Ultimate Driving Machine", shares your notion of what it means to be German, then.

Or maybe they understand that different marketing approaches are required in different cultures. The slogan BMW uses in German-speaking markets is "Freude am Fahren" (roughly, "driving pleasure", or to be somewhat more literal, "pleasure while driving"), which is a bit more modest than "The Ultimate Driving Machine".