Porsche is, after a titanic batttle, about to become a member of the VW Group. Last year Porsche tried to take over VW. VW struck back. This has been one of the great soap operas of industrial history.
The fight has encompassed money, power, glamour and a rift in one of Planet Automobile’s most high-profile families, the Porsche-Piechs.
But at an all-night board meeting last night, the boss of Porsche, Wendelin Wiedeking, was pushed out. He’d led the fight for little Porsche to buy the giant VW Group. He’d always thought he could do a better job of running VW than the VW bosses could. And you could see his point – Porsche was a basket case when he took over in 1992, and he turned it into the most profitable car company on earth.
But to swallow VW, Porsche needed huge sums of money. And the more VW shares it bought, the more expensive the rest of the shares became. In the end, despite borrowing a reported £10 billion ($20.1 billion), Porsche couldn’t get majority stake in VW.
And then there was the family feud. Wolfgang Porsche is the leading Porsche at Porsche, but his cousin Ferdinand Piech (they’re both grandsons of Ferdinand Porsche) is chair of the supervisory board over at the VW Group. They have spent the past year trying to manoeuvre a majority of shareholding family members – as well as powerful politicians and union leaders – into one camp or the other.
So what does it all mean for car lovers? Well, if Porsche had won the battle, Porsche cars would have remained low-volume, distinctive and expensive. Just a couple of weeks ago Porsche manufacturing boss Michael Macht told me the Boxster/Cayman would always be the baseline Porsche, and that they’d never do a cheaper car.
Well, that was his job title at the time. Yesterday he was given the job of replacing Wiedeking as Porsche CEO. But his power will be curtailed when the VW merger happens.
It’s overwhelmingly likely that Piech will make sure his protegee Martin Winterkorn, currently boss of the VW Group, will be given the task of running the new combined group.
And Winterkorn’s policy, which he learned at the feet of Piech, is to do as much platform sharing as possible. It was Piech, 15 years ago, who masterplanned cars like the Golf/A3/Octavia/Beetle/Leon etc.
‘Many rods catch more fish,’ Piech used to say.
I think the fact that VW, not Porsche, has won this takeover battle means it’s likely you’ll see more mongrel Porsches. For instance remember the VW Bluesport Roadster? How about a Porsche version, as well as a VW version and an Audi version? Or a Porsche rebody of the Audi Q5? Not a nice thought.
Oh and don’t feel sorry for Wiedeking. He has walked away with a £43 million ($86 million) package. Though he promises to give half away to local Stuttgart workers’ charities.
Does this mean i will be able to get brake pads and air filters cheaper for my beloved 928s4??
Will we see a reasonably priced 911??
Will we be able to buy a gti with a flat 6??
And everone who owns a bug can put a porsche badge on it now!!
But owning a Porsche isn’t as exciting when everyone else has one. That’s the worrying point black dog.
I really hope we don’t see new Porsches with bits and pieces from the VW parts bin… argh.
I hope they make a front engine Porshe 505 would be happy plus it would be good to see some new desgins all porshes look the same i hope they build a porshe similar to the audi r8 all wheel drive turbo front engine 6 speed
oh great,porsche should have bought TATA and stuck a porsche badge on the tata nano.
A mate has a really nice 924 i give him heaps because it has an audi motor in it – but he comes back with the fact that my car has a benz motor.
so i think that the parts bin has been shared for a while now.
I thought Porsche was already part of the VW group?
Not officially but porsche,mercedes,audi and vw have been using each others parts for years !!
go figure.
dude thats a nice car
whats a nice car?
oh my god..
i really love Porsche and now look
VW is most likely going to ruin the
look of it and change where the engine
is..
everything about the Porsche made it
unique and so reliable most likely
its going to look like some sh*t box
which has hardly any HP and will
pretty much be a normal car not a super-
car because of the price thats going to
go down..
its like alfa romeo taking over ferrari
and messing up all their cars making
average cars cheap ect. so that hardly
makes it a super-car because firstly everyone
can afford it also we will most likely see them
everywhere and secondly it wont feel as good
as it was before the company bought it..
im sure many other people agree..
their going to ruin the car..
Theres a mig-engined Porsche in the pipeline, carbon fibre/kevlar body 4WD and the Bugatti motor tweaked to 1400NM torque. It was postponed because of the financial downfall but apparently it will show its face by mid-year next year.
can it put 1400nm down the car might be to light to even do that with 1400nm you could probly have 1st gear to rip up to 150km/h it probly do it to
gratefulness you for your report and it helped me in preparing my college assignment.
Where the hell are they gunna put that motor? It would have to be a front engine. There’s just nowhere else to put it. Sorry I just don’t see it. Even VW are not stupid enough to bring out a front engine Porche. The only way to fit that engine down back would be to remove the rear seats & even then I doubt that it would fit, you would propably have to move the driving position forward.
1400nm Porche Torqu – Where have you come up with that? I’m happy for you to prove me wrong, but to put it bluntly, I think your full of it.
I agree with G.O.M what he saids makes sence to me.
It just occured to me what kind of porshe needs 1400nm of torque.
they must be building a truck.
Today we live a world where power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of an elite leadership, some elected, some not, who have unprecedented control over the shape of the world the rest of us must live in.
This power elite is failing us. Despite all the fine words about climate change from many political and business leaders, emissions continue to rise faster than the IPCC’s worst-case scenario. The hunt for still more oil to pump from the ground and into the atmosphere goes on as hungrily as ever, and even in rich nations with good renewable energy resources like Britain, plans are underway for new coal-fired power stations – simply because energy from coal is so cheap.
To stop runaway climate change against this background, we need a binding international agreement which drastically reduces emissions at incredible speed. But jockeying between states out to protect their national economic interests combined with intense lobbying by corporate fossil fuel interests mean that the UN negotiations have been dangerously diluted and undermined.
The highest aspirations of any politicians of the wealthy developed nations fall far, far short of the necessary cuts in emissions identified by the science:
The best deal even being considered right now would give us a 50% chance of avoiding runaway climate change.
What’s more, the sole mechanism up for discussion to achieve the inadequate targets being put forward is the foundation of a new global market in carbon emissions. Given what a mess bankers and brokers have made of the global economy, the idea that we are going to entrust them with the entire future of the human race is frankly terrifying.
Humanity deserves better than this. The politicians and bankers and businessmen have proved that they cannot be trusted to sort this problem out on their own. So what are you waiting for?