VALE FERDINAND PIËCH

Tribute to the automotive colossus who brought us the Porsche 917, Audi Quattro and Bugatti Veyron

DFERDINAND PIËCH was a man who defied rational categorisation. His achievements were the stuff of automotive industry legend. A scion of the Porsche family and grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, he was best known as the former chairman and chief executive officer who transformed Volkswagen AG into a global powerhouse which then almost imploded under his unremitting pressure.

Piëch, who passed away last month, aged 82, after being suddenly taken ill, exited Volkswagen under a cloud in 2015, mere months before the Dieselgate scandal broke. While this undoubtedly besmirched his famously hands-on legacy, Piëch was the engineering brain behind the Porsche 917, the Audi Quattro and the Bugatti Veyron, among others.

A dyslexic autocrat with 12 children from four mothers, Piëch exhibited idiosyncrasies and eccentricities which were often difficult to fathom. Such was his influence and his loathing of air-conditioning, the Frankfurt motor show halls were often stiflingly hot, and Piëch never travelled away without a tool kit to both discombobulate hotel air-con systems and open windows to allow fresh air in. Employees were cowed by his habit of firing anybody who he deemed made the same mistake twice. His unerring task focus created no little collateral damage.

“If I want to achieve something, I approach the problem and push through without realising what’s happening around me,” he admitted in a 2002 autobiography. “My desire for harmony is limited.” This winat-any-cost style motivated him to gamble huge amounts of Porsche’s money on the 917, a racing car so successful that it gave Porsche its first outright Le Mans win and was then so dominant it effectively put an end to the iconic Can-am series.

Piëch moved to Audi in 1981, polishing the brand from more proletarian origins into a credible BMW and Mercedes-benz rival, revolutionising world rallying along the way with the all-wheel-drive Quattro, developing the five-cylinder petrol engine and introducing the ethos of Vorsprung

durch Technik – forward through technology – a phrase that could have served as his personal motto.

In 1993 he moved to Volkswagen AG as chairman of the board of management and oversaw massive expansion within the group. In one year alone, Piëch added Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti to the fold. Rolls-royce proved one that got away, Volkswagen acquiring the car building operation but never the rights to name. Divesting it to bitter rivals BMW was one of Piëch’s greatest regrets.

There were other misses too. He didn’t get to see his 1L/100km production car materialise, and many halo projects such as the Volkswagen Phaeton and Bugatti Veyron burnt huge sums of cash. Transforming VW from a regional to a global industrial giant remains his greatest achievement. He’s also unquestionably the greatest product development talent the modern car industry has known.

How did Ferdinand Piëch want to be remembered? He was typically unequivocal when posed the question by Peter Robinson in a 1998 interview for Wheels: “As somebody who didn’t make too many mistakes.”