Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche is worried that Mercedes is being outpaced by its arch rivals at BMW and Audi has called on staff to rise to the challenge.
"Our competitors' success should provide us with additional motivation," said Zetsche in a letter to all Daimler employees, pointing out that Daimler will refuse to settle for anything other than number one status.
"In the long run we can't be content to be in a 'solid second' or even 'third' place: We are Daimler - we should be far ahead of the pack! And if that requires something that we don't currently have, then we'll identify and develop it."
But although Zetsche admits that "some of our competitors are now growing faster and more profitably than we are" he does at least sound confident that Daimler has the breadth of product to compete with its resurgent rivals, saying that current sales figures are "just snapshots in time and should not be overestimated. After all, many of our best new products are yet to come."
But there is no doubt that Mercedes is struggling, comparatively speaking - in the first half of 2011, Merc increased its global sales by 9.7 per cent (to 610,531), while BMW's brand sales jumped by 17.8 per cent (to 689,861), and Audi grew by 17.7 per cent (selling 652,970 units).