Ferdinand Piech, longtime Volkswagen patriarch, dies at 82
BERLIN >> German auto industry power broker Ferdinand Piech, the longtime patriarch of Volkswagen AG and the key engineer of its takeover of Porsche, has died, his widow confirmed Monday. He was 82.
His wife, Ursula Piech, told the dpa news agency in a statement provided by their family lawyer that her husband died Sunday “suddenly and unexpectedly” but did not give a specific cause.
“Ferdinand Piech’s life was marked by his passion for the automobile and for the workers who built them,” she wrote. “He was an enthusiastic engineer and car lover until the end.”
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 nine-year stint as chief executive. He then became the company’s supervisory board chief — a post in which he wielded unusual influence.
He crowned his career with his starring role in a long-drawn-out drama in which luxury automaker Porsche first tried to take over Volkswagen, then had the tables turned on it by the mass-market giant.
However, he stepped down as board chairman after losing a power struggle with then-CEO Martin Winterkorn in 2015, a few months before a scandal over diesel emissions-rigging 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 cost-saving program 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 popular new Golf and Passat models.
Piech had a reputation for ramming through ideas in the face of internal resistance. He ignored doubters and re-created 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 front-line management in 2002, when he was succeeded as CEO by Bernd Pischetsrieder. But he remained very much a power behind the scenes in his new role as chairman of the supervisory board, the German equivalent of a U.S. board of directors.
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. But the company patriarch himself was untouched by the fallout from an affair that brought down his long-serving personnel chief, Peter Hartz, among others.
In March 2006, Piech asked to meet prosecutors as a witness and told them that he had known nothing of alleged improper spending. He was never a suspect in the case.
Piech was, however, central in a new bout of turbulence at Volkswagen in subsequent years as Porsche — controlled by members of the Piech and Porsche families — ramped up its holding in Volkswagen.
The move was first billed as protecting Volkswagen from any hostile takeover, then turned into a fullfledged takeover attempt that triggered a power struggle among the Piech and Porsche families.
Porsche and its ambitious CEO, Wendelin Wiedeking, overreached — building up a 51% stake in Volkswagen, but loading Porsche with debt just as the economy turned sour in 2008.
VW and Piech then pushed for a deal to fold the lucrative luxury-car business into VW’s portfolio, widening its range in anticipation of a recovery in the luxury market.
They got their way in a 2009 deal that saw Wiedeking ousted.
“Piech saw Wiedeking as an impetuous risk-taker who had designs on grabbing a disproportionate amount of power for himself,” IHS Global Insight analyst Tim Urquhart said at the time.
Piech abruptly stepped down as board chairman in April 2015 after failing to get his way on the future of Winterkorn, who had been at the helm for eight years. A few weeks earlier, he had said in an interview with Der Spiegel that he was distancing himself from the CEO — but gave no public reason for the remark, which led to a clash with other board members.