'VW town' motors on despite slowdown

Inside one of the world's biggest car plants, there is no sense that global auto demand is in freefall as Germany heads into its worst recession in six decades.

Volkswagen's presses thud and hiss as they crush metal into shape, orange sparks fly and workers whistle to music on the radio as they screw on headlights and radiators.

Few towns rely as heavily on the auto economy as Wolfsburg in north Germany. Purpose-built on Hitler's orders in 1938 to make the "peoples' car", about half the town's workers have a job directly linked to VW. Yet the mood is far from depressed.