Perhaps they will produce fewer cars and actually ramp up the quality on all their cars. I see this as great news.

That's precisely what I'm thinking, not to say that cutting jobs in a good thing 'per say'. I just see more opportunities if the company properly takes advantage of the freed resources/assets.

It's not likely that the company wants to produce fewer cars. They want to produce more cars with fewer workers. As recently noted, they are taking back their contract with Steyr to assemble some cars in Austria, and will assemble all their cars in-house. Right there they would need more production workers, not fewer.

Given that they will be produced in house now, one can only believe that the quality of workmanship will improve vastly as Mercedes had no direct control over the quality in Austria at the contracted partner's plant.

i don't see the job cuts as a motivation to drive quality, but rather to drive profitability. Profitability comes first, then followed by quality for the new chief to retain his post.