When we worked out in Germany the cars model type was removed - we were told they would be company cars and it was often a closely guarded secret 1976 - 1979.
That's the first time I have ever heard of that, whilst working for a US Conglomerate, we had access to company cars across the world. I drove a German registered company Ford Taunus on the Bodensee in southern Germany for 6 months in the late 70's and it had all the model markings on it. I believe it was same for the local management company cars, in fact most senior managers always drove alone, in armour plated cars, especially in Italy because of the Mafia.
The real problems we experienced were having a northern German registered car crossing into Switzerland (to catch weekly flights to and from the UK from Zurich) at Constance in southern Germany when Baader- Meinof terrorist group where very active. With each crossing we were attracting more and more attention ,all the documents checked on both the German and Swiss sides. Then on one occasion the Swiss border guard accepted our passports were valid, the company car documents were valid, but what proof did we have that we should be driving the company car. Bloody good question, fortunately we had TWA credit cards we charged our flights to, that had our company name and our names on, that was a very tense few moments. Rather farcical, as every morning and evening the border was open to local registered cars passing completely unchecked at peak commuter times. If I was Baader- Meinof I would just buy a locally registered car and cross the border at those unchecked times! A few weeks later, a German border guard shot someone that jumped out of a car and tried to leg it, about a dozen cars in front of us. That kind of focused us!
