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Ferdinand Piëch, a former Volkswagen Group chairman and one of the most influential figures in the automotive industry, died at 82 on 25 August 2019 in a German hospital.
He died suddenly and unexpectedly after collapsing in a restaurant, according to his wife Ursula. Equal parts brilliant and controversial, Piëch leveraged his determination, tireless leadership skills and engineering prowess to turn Volkswagen into the global powerhouse it is today.
We’re looking back at the cars and the business decisions that made him one of the greats.
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Piëch’s early life
Piëch was born on 17 April 1937 in Vienna, Austria. He was named after his grandfather, Ferdinand Porsche, who was responsible for developing the original Volkswagen Beetle and later creating the sports car manufacturer that bears his name.
He also received his grandfather’s passion for engineering. Piëch studied mechanical engineering in Switzerland and famously wrote his thesis about developing a Formula 1 engine. He joined Porsche in 1963 and became an influential member of its research and development department.
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The Porsche 917 (1969)
Piëch played a significant role in developing the Porsche 917. Powerful, light and aerodynamic, it caught competitors by surprise and became a force to reckon with on the track. Piëch later called the 917 the riskiest car in his career, partly because it cost a fortune to develop yet it wasn’t successful during its inaugural season, but the investment paid off. The 917 became one of the quickest and most successful race cars of its era, it notably won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1970, and it’s still revered in 2019.
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The Mercedes-Benz OM617 (1974)
Porsche promoted Piëch to the position of technical director in 1971. His future at the automaker looked bright but he was forced to retire in 1972 after his grandfather decided all members of the Porsche family had to step down from their leadership positions. Porsche enforced this rule to prevent business matters from further dividing his family but the fault lines remained visible for decades.
Piëch opened an engineering firm in Stuttgart, the town Mercedes-Benz and Porsche call home. Mercedes-Benz commissioned the development of a naturally-aspirated five-cylinder diesel engine based on the four-cylinder it already offered. Piëch’s office designed the OM617 that made its debut in 1974 in the 240D 3.0 (W115; pictured). It was later fitted to the 300D (W115 and W123) and the 300SD (W116 and W126) and it helped the firm establish its reputation for building million-mile cars.
The OM617 wasn’t as far removed from racing as it might sound. In 1976, an experimental C111-IID powered by a turbocharged, 188bhp evolution of the engine set 16 records on Italy’s Nardò track.
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The first Audi five-cylinder engine (1976)
Piëch didn’t remain independent for very long. He joined Volkswagen’s Audi division in late 1972 and rose through the ranks in record time. He was appointed the company’s board member for research and development in 1975 and used this position to completely reinvent Audi’s image through engineering.
In 1976, Audi released its first five-cylinder engine in the 100 5E (pictured). It’s a unique mechanical configuration that has defined the brand ever since; the RS 3 and the TT RS carry the torch in 2019.
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The Audi Quattro (1980)
Piëch was part of a team within Audi that began developing a car for the World Rally Championship (WRC) in 1977. Engineers decided to use a turbocharged, five-cylinder engine and chose four-wheel drive instead of rear-wheel drive (which Audi didn’t use) after watching a Volkswagen Iltis effortlessly plow through deep snow during winter testing in Sweden. The Audi Quattro made its debut in 1980.
The Quattro dominated the international rally scene during the 1980s. Here again, it also had a lasting influence on the brand. Quattro remains one of Audi’s key selling points and its recent models (including the Q8 and the latest RS6) borrow several styling cues from the 1980 original.
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The Audi V8 (1988)
Audi introduced the flagship V8 in 1988, the same year it promoted Piëch to CEO. The V8 looked a lot like the firm’s smaller models, and the resemblance hurt its sales, but it laid the foundations Audi needed to credibly rival BMW and Mercedes-Benz in the luxury car segment.
Piëch maintained a business relationship with Porsche. The four-door 989 developed during the late 1980s ditched the 911’s rear-mounted, air-cooled flat-six in favor of a front-mounted, water-cooled V8. The 4.2-liter unit was an evolution of the Audi V8’s engine. Porsche canceled the 989 for cost reasons in 1991.
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Taking over Volkswagen (1993)
In 1993, Piëch replaced Carl Hahn as CEO of the Volkswagen Group. The appointment wasn’t a way to ensure the 56-year old would sail smoothly into retirement. Slumping sales and years of losses had brought the automaker to its knees and it needed to be turned around sooner rather than later.
Although he was trained as an engineer, Piëch had become a skilled (and, by most accounts, ruthless) leader. He made three commitments shortly after taking the top job at Volkswagen. He pledged to optimize the group’s network of factories, improve build quality across the board and expand into other segments of the market. He recruited (sometimes controversially) the best engineers and managers in the business to make his vision a reality before the end of the 1990s.
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Piëch’s buying spree (late 1990s)
Cars like the fourth-generation Golf and the W8-powered Passat improved Volkswagen’s image but the automaker’s reach was limited. Piëch knew he needed to form a bigger group in order to cover every segment of the market so he went on a buying spree in the late 1990s.
He purchased Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Bugatti and Lamborghini in 1998 and acquired Swedish truck manufacturer Scania in 2000. While Volkswagen quickly sold Rolls-Royce to BMW, Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti are still among its crown jewels in 2019. Significantly, they’re considerably more successful than they were before they joined the Wolfsburg-based brand’s empire.
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The Phaeton (2002)
While Piëch stopped short of adding a supercar to the Volkswagen range, he believed the automaker had what it took to compete against the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and the BMW 7 Series in the luxury car segment. The Phaeton introduced in 2002 took Volkswagen further upmarket than any model before it. The fact that it competed directly against the Audi A8 wasn’t considered problematic; Piëch saw internal competition as a positive thing and often encouraged it.
Volkswagen built the Phaeton in a glass-walled factory in Dresden, Germany. It was an incredibly ambitious project and, in hindsight, one of the few times Piëch misjudged the market. The Phaeton left the ever-important North American region in 2006 after dismal sales but it lived on globally until 2016.
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The Bugatti Veyron (2005)
Piëch showed a strong interest in supercars during the 1990s. He oversaw the development of the mid-engined Audi Spyder Quattro Concept in 1991 and the model came shocking close to receiving the green light for production. The automaker unveiled the W12-powered Avus the following year and the Volkswagen W12 concept presented in 1997 set several records on the Nardò track.
None of these cars reached showrooms. Volkswagen’s acquisition of Bugatti finally gave Piëch the chance to take the automaker into the industry’s most exclusive segment. Developed on a blank slate, the quad-turbocharged, 987bhp Veyron (pictured) was the fastest and most powerful car in the world when it made its debut in 2005. It was as much a celebration of Bugatti’s past as a tribute to the Auto Union grand prix cars developed by Piëch’s grandfather during the 1930s.
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The battle for Porsche (late 2000s)
The discord between the Porsche and the Piëch families reached new heights when Volkswagen purchased the sports car manufacturer in 2009. The deal was announced after Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking spent years unsuccessfully trying to buy Volkswagen in a bid to dethrone Piëch at the top. Locking horns with Volkswagen’s most powerful executive took a toll and Wiedeking resigned in 2009.
“Either I’m shot dead or I win,” Piëch explained.
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The XL1 (2013)
Piëch’s on-going quest to cover every square inch of the automotive industry led him to commission the development of an ultra-efficient commuter. The Lupo 3L unveiled in 1999 had already demonstrated what could be achieved by dropping a small diesel engine in a light car with an aerodynamically-optimised body. Piëch had plans to take this concept even further.
In 2002, he drove a prototype named 1-Litre Car from Wolfsburg to Hamburg to show what the company was capable of. It remained an expensive one-off but Piëch remained committed to making it a reality. The 2009 L1 and the 2011 XL1 concepts paved the way for the production model (pictured) unveiled in 2013. Also named XL1, it arrived with a streamlined body, a two-seater interior and a diesel-electric plug-in hybrid powertrain. It exceeded the efficiency goals Piëch had in mind but the technology needed to build it made it nearly 10 times more expensive than a Polo.
Volkswagen priced the XL1 at 111,000 euros and capped production at 250 units globally.
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Piëch resigns
Piëch and his wife both resigned from Volkswagen’s board of directors in 2015 following a power struggle with then-CEO Martin Winterkorn. Two years later, he sold most of his 14.7% stake in Porsche SE (which owns half of the voting shares in Volkswagen) to his brother Hans Michael Piëch.
The billion-euro sale marked his exit from the automotive industry.
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