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Ferdinand Piech, chairman of VW Group, has resigned his departure made headlines around the world, not just in the car Media Piech will remember rightly, as a titan of the industry, and the figure most important in the world of the German car since, well, since the men responsible for the original Beetle.
One of them, the man who pushed the idea of a car people, of course, was the incarnation of unspeakable evil The other, the real engineer who designed it was Ferdinand Porsche - grandfather of Ferdinand Piech.
Why the fuss over the starting Piech It wasn t even daily CEO of Volkswagen Group hadn t been since 2002. From then until he was actually chairman of the supervisory board, a German structure overseeing the main board but doesn t run directly on the day the company day but you can be sure Piech was a return driver extraordinarily powerful office all these years.
So he'll miss his commitment to excellence in engineering, his brutal spirit of competition and visionary perspective would see.
Let's start with engineering As a member of the Porsche family, he had a good start of his personal project start was to design the Porsche 917, one of the most successful and impressive races of history of cars but he bickered with his siblings and cousins, they all agreed to detach from Porsche they kept important stakes, while the money from the Piech family meant that he never needed to work again.
But he immediately began an engineering consulting firm Hence the OM617 diesel five-cylinder Mercedes It was the first diesel passenger car diesel and premium Merc A five-cylinder Remember those things we snaking through career Piech.
Before long, he was appointed chief engineer at Audi VW This subsidiary was struggling in the shadow of Mercedes and BMW, despite having sprung from the Union Auto, the beautiful pre-war company for which the great -Père of Piech Ferdinand Porsche was designed GP 16 cylinder engines.
Yet during the 20 years Piech era - he later became boss Audi - the company introduced the petrol five-cylinder engine, galvanized Quattro and aluminum body, advanced low-drag shapes and diesel world leaders Audi engines became a top player appropriate range.
In 1993 he took the job of running the entire group VW has been mortally wounded near bankruptcy, he began to use its engineering expertise to reduce costs and improve the car, more critical of its platform strategy.
I asked Piech what mattered most of all the things he had done at Audi He said he was moving 80, 90, 100 and 200 on a common platform, massively increase the parts of volumes purchase and reduce costs at VW, he moved immediately Passat on the same platform and the same effect.
From that thought came his biggest move, the only thing that should probably be inscribed on the stone monument of the platform strategy Mark 4 Volkswagen Golf and all his relatives the great flowering of models, the first TT New mass Beetle seats and Skodas.
This meant huge cost savings, and time of engineering and money instead of effort could be poured into making best interiors, and an even wider range of cars it has become common practice multi-brand automakers.
Sometimes the press grumbled the Golf family were too similar, but Piech thought he could grow the Group having more brands competing with each other many rods catch more fish, he used to say.
Indeed, the competition was fuel for his fire not only with other automakers, but within the VW group, he liked to put against the engineers from different divisions each other, to see which would best work Perhaps because it is a large family, it is often spoken of sibling rivalry between its brands a dozen he had children, passing through four different mothers.
Direction Piech has transformed the VW group around But it wasn t enough for him, he went into a buying frenzy, acquiring Bentley Bugatti Lamborghini and Scania He wanted others also - Ducati and MAN trucks and ItalDesign have been added since he became president, and he had a go at getting Alfa Romeo too.
Most dramatically, he pulled the strings that ensured VW took over Porsche That was the conclusion of an epic power struggle between car names, different groups of managers, and the various factions of the Porsche dynasty A result of this takeover is the Porsche Macan Maybe you Don t think the Macan is ambitious enough well how about the 918.
But if you really want to see the scale of the ambition of Piech as an engineer, watching two cars opposite ends of the range of the Group The VW XL1 and the Bugatti Veyron.
It was Piech who laid the template for the Veyron, and declared his power and top speed numbers before a prototype had never run leaders Rival car company - and me, before I drove - thought a vanity project lose money mad, but he pushed the Veyron development engineers who do not meet its targets were abruptly pulled along the way.
Then came the XL1, another incredible audacity car, a high-tech design to achieve a number in the economy this time not the performance unmatched elsewhere Piech had watched over the project from the time he was a little fiber carbon cigar car on wheels.
By the time he left the CEO job to become chairman of the supervisory board, he said that the Porsche 917 and the VW Phaeton were the highlights of his career.
Er, the Phaeton Why move to VW upmarket There are not enough good big cars and the few who are there, they earn too This is the reason we are stepping in.
See, its competitive eye could not hold his rivals make big profits In fact, the Phaeton failed to sell except now in China, but without it wouldn us t have the Bentley family Continental Another example of Piech play the game more long as he was credited at the time.
People called him obsessed with the details and the big picture they've called the building a lot more than management Piech was close sometimes despotic, and certainly he openly said that a little friction and the needle was necessary to obtain the best results, and a small cabal of managers ran the company anyone who could not give him a t quick and intelligent response to one of his probing questions rarely last long in their work.
Since Piech took over in 1993, the VW group rose to exceed GM and Toyota challenge as the largest automaker in the world He sold 10 million vehicles last year and employs 600,000 people.
Now Piech, previously politician arch, stumbled He tried to stab current CEO Martin Winterkorn of the VW group in the back, and it's hard to know why - Winterkorn has always been a protected But Piech rest of the Porsche family, and the shareholders of the state, and powerful unions supported it Winterkorn Piech was expelled.
How VW will change not known among his immense success, it stains poorly, perhaps the result of being run by a tight management team of the North German remotely.
Up The family are good cheap cars for Europe, but too small and expensive for many huge new markets is no seven-seat SUV, absolutely essential to the United States but the current generation of management were appointed by Piech and although these issues are addressed there's no quick fix.
But we can not dwell on that instead Let recall the incredible legacy of a true genius, an engineer of extraordinary magnitude, and above all, one of the big car nut -Prof The Honorable Dr. Hc Techn Dipl Ing ETH Ferdinand Karl Piech, TopGear salute you.
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