/ 2 October 2019

VW engineer, visionary and Pïech of work

Brilliant autocrat: Ferdinand Piëch drove Volkswagen to the top.
Brilliant autocrat: Ferdinand Piëch drove Volkswagen to the top.

 

 

Former Volkswagen boss Ferdinand Piëch, who died in August at 82, was the autocratic heir of a storied motoring dynasty who drove VW from the brink of bankruptcy to become a global empire.

He was celebrated as a visionary corporate leader and brilliant engineer who knew every model leaving the production line down to the last bolt.

But the man with the steel-blue eyes was also feared as a ruthless manager and master of intrigue who used his connections to fight his many battles.

During his over half-century career he turned VW into a 13-brand empire and pillar of the German economy with now 660 000 employees.

But he left it in anger in 2015, shortly before the company faced its worst ever crises with the “dieselgate” scandal.

“Piëch wasn’t just any car boss,” judged top-selling Bild daily. “With him, a piece of German economic history dies. He was the last auto manager to build his own cars.”

News weekly Der Spiegel dubbed him the “Engineer of Power … a brilliant technician and Machiavellian master”.

Ferdinand Karl Piëch was born in Vienna on April 17, 1937.

His father Anton ran the VW plant founded by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler during World War II.

His mother Louise was the daughter of Ferdinand Porsche, inventor of the iconic Beetle and founder of the luxury brand.

As a child, Ferdinand battled dyslexia and brought home poor grades. He was sent off to a tough boarding school — a “dark time” which hardened his character, as he later recalled.

He studied mechanical engineering and wrote his master’s thesis on Formula 1 engines, then started at Stuttgart-based Porsche.

There Piëch oversaw the design of the iconic Porsche 917, sales of which took off after it won races including the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Two years later he switched to Audi, turning the VW subsidiary into a premium car maker that could compete with BMW and Daimler’s Mercedes, and became its chairperson in 1988.

Piëch then applied his magic to Wolfsburg-based VW, taking over in 1993 when it suffered huge losses. He fired managers, streamlined production and rapidly boosted sales and profits.

He ran it until 2002 when, under company policy, he had to retire at age 65, but remained on its supervisory board until 2015 — having grown VW into a conglomerate that now includes brands Bentley, SEAT, Skoda, Bugatti and Lamborghini. Perhaps his toughest battle came in 2009 when the Porsche family tried to take over VW in a clash of dynasties.

In the end, the opposite happened and, in a triumph for “Mr Volkswagen”, Porsche became one of the brands in the VW stable.

Piëch pushed VW on to become the world leader, selling over 10-million vehicles a year, and battling Japan’s Toyota for global dominance.

His reign ended when he went to war with his long-time confidant, chief executive Martin Winterkorn, and lost support of key players on the supervisory board.

He had to admit defeat and left the company in anger — arguably just in time.

Months later the “dieselgate” scandal broke when US regulators discovered VW had fitted millions of cars with devices allowing them to cheat exhaust emissions tests.

The corporate disaster has so far cost the group more than €30-billion and greatly damaged the image of the German automotive sector.

In 2017, Piëch sold off most of his stake, worth about a billion euros, to other members of the Porsche-Piëch family.

On August 25 Piëch, who had 12 children from different relationships, collapsed in a restaurant in Rosenheim, Bavaria in front of his wife Ursula (63) and died that night in hospital.

Auto industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer was among many who honoured his legacy, saying that “without Piëch, the automotive world would look very different today”. — AFP