FERDINAND PIËCH (1937-2019)
Defiantly selfdirected and autocratic, Ferdinand Piëch cast a long shadow over the motor industry. The engineer-turned-business mogul, who died on 25 August, packed a lot into his 82 years.
Born in Vienna in 1937, his mother Louise was Ferdinand Porsche’s daughter. His father, Anton, ran the sprawling VW factory in Wolfsburg for the Nazis during WW2 and was interned at the end of hostilities before being absolved of his alleged crimes. Young Ferdinand was then dispatched to a Swiss boarding school before training to be an engineer.
Piëch subsequently went to work for the fledgling Porsche where he gradually assumed greater responsibility to the point
where he instigated the Porsche 917, which won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1970 and 1971. Where the marque had previously been happy gunning for class wins, Piëch insisted that people only remember outright victors.
He remained associated with Porsche as a Member of the Supervisory Board from 1981 to 2015; in fact, the Porsche and Piëch families still run the Stuttgart maker, while retaining a 52.2 per cent voting stake in Volkswagen.
Piëch moved to Audi in 1972. In time, he would usher in the 1980 quattro and help transform the marque into a highly profitable rival to BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
Having risen to the role of chief executive, he assumed the same position at Audi’s parent company Volkswagen in 1993. He saved the firm from financial ruin with extensive platform-sharing by the end of the Nineties – badge engineering for small- and medium-sized cars that Europeans and Brits bought in their droves – and still do.
Empire-building soon followed – Volkswagen Group had added Bentley, Lamborghini, Scania and Ducati to its portfolio by the end of Piëch’s tenure. Piëch dug deep to wrest Bentley away from BMW and revived the Crewe firm’s stalwart 6.75-litre V8 for use in the Arnage Red Label.
He was ousted as supervisory board chairman in 2015 shortly before ‘diesel-gate’ made headlines.
He is survived by his wife, Ursula, and 13 children.