Hardnosed executive drove Volkswagen takeover of Porsche
GERMAN car industry power broker Ferdinand Piech was the longtime patriarch of
Volkswagen AG and the key engineer of its takeover of Porsche.
He died on August 25, aged 82. Piech — a grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, who founded the company that bears his name and designed the first version of VW’s signature Beetle — was an auto industry mainstay for more than four decades.
He was credited with turning around Volkswagen in the 1990s, leading it back to profit during a nineyear stint as chief executive. He crowned his career with his starring role in a drawnout drama in which luxury carmaker Porsche first tried to take over Volkswagen, then had the tables turned on it by the massmarket giant.
However, he stepped down as board chairman after losing a power struggle with thenboss Martin Winterkorn in 2015, a few months before a scandal over diesel emissionsrigging shook the company and prompted Winterkorn’s resignation.
Piech was born in Vienna on April 17, 1937, the son of Louise Porsche and Anton Piech, an early manager of Volkswagen’s main Wolfsburg plant.
He started work at Porsche in 1963 and gained responsibility for testing and development — working on the Porsche 917 racing car, among other models.
Piech moved in 1972 to Audi, where he remained for two decades, although he retained an interest in Porsche via his family. He became Audi’s chief executive in 1988, pushing through a costsaving programme that improved the luxury automaker’s results.
Piech took over as chief executive of Audi parent Volkswagen in January 1993 at a time when the company was in crisis.
He was credited with leading it back into profit, cutting the work week from five days to four, negotiating firmly with suppliers, and overseeing the success of new Golf and Passat models.
Piech had a reputation for ramming through ideas in the face of internal resistance. He ignored doubters and recreated the 1960s Beetle as the New Beetle, a hit in the key North American market.
Volkswagen expanded its reach at both ends of the market during Piech’s reign. At the lower end, it bought Czech carmaker Skoda after the collapse of communism; upmarket, it also took over the Bentley, Bugatti and Lamborghini brands and made its own venture into the luxury sector with the Phaeton sedan.
Piech stepped back from frontline management in 2002, when he was succeeded as chief executive by Bernd Pischetsrieder. But he remained a power behind the scenes in his new role as chairman of the supervisory board.
A corruption scandal that erupted in 2005 cast an unflattering light on practices at Volkswagen during Piech’s reign, centering on privileges improperly received by employee representatives, among them trips abroad that involved prostitutes.
In March 2006, Piech asked to meet prosecutors as a witness and told them he had known nothing of alleged improper spending. He was never a suspect in the case.
Piech had 13 children from several relationships and twice as many grandchildren. He married his second wife, Ursula, in 1984, and the couple moved to Salzburg, Austria. Ursula Piech was elected to Volkswagen’s supervisory board in 2012, but resigned her seat along with her husband.— AP