OldDogmeat

Going by the news earlier in the year that had Porsche buying large chunks of VW I was under the impression that Porsche were in the business of basically making aggressive moves to buy and own VW.

Just read this short snippet on PH that makes it sound as though the tables have turned and that WV would be the Big Cheese in a 'merger' and that top Porsche bosses would lose thier positions with WV in control?

http://www.pistonheads.com/news/defa...?storyId=19920

Am I reading this right; Has something happened to strengthen VW's position over Porsche since the news earlier in the year?

Nick? You're generally the man for German car manufacturer news?

lovegroova

Well, Porsche is being investigated for its behaviour in screwing the Hedge funds last year

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbys...er-VW-deal.html

As the whole show will be run and owned by the Piech and Porsche families, Weideking will be the scapegoat for the investigation. Let's not forget that the Porsche family essentially made VW by engineering the Beetle for Hitler (although of course it was taken away from them after WWII).

With reference to the Pistonheads article, and with apologies to Sacha Baron Choen (aka Borat), Auto Union is "just about anti-semetic enough."

OldDogmeat

Ahhh, I see, that makes it all a bit clearer now.

So basically Porsche have pretty much been found (or are about to be found) to have been manipulating the market as experts at the time were suggesting and have pulled thier position back from an aggresive takeover to a 'mutual merger'.

Cheers for that Lovegroova.

lovegroova

Well, that's only my opinion, which may very well be incorrect

Some good stuff on Wiki here about the relationship between the two http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#Re...lkswagen_Law.22

and some detail on the meger here http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Porsche_and_Vo...agree_to_merger

and here http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2245925/posts

Porsche has a Euro9bn debt which it ran up trying to buy VW and it needs VW in order to be able to manage this, otherwise they are up the creek.

I don't know twhy the press keeps referring to them as a sports car maker - they are a 4x4 manufacturer these days

eSeM

Porsche made 6billion Euros from playing the markets last year, when they were trying to buy 75% of VW ....... which was 3 times what they made from car sales IIRC.

(German bank that I was contracting for lost 330million on this and there are at least 2 investigation into their practices.)

Pissing off the big financial centres was not a good move for Porsche as that is where they make a big percentage of their sales and combined with the recession, Porsche have been significantly weakened.

Nick Graves

Right, this is a complicated one, so I'll try to be brief.

Unusually, Germany still has a lot of family-owned Mittelstand companies, some of which are now too big to be called Mittelstand any more.

I think many may be familiar with the Quandt's empire, most of which had to be sold to pay off death duties. But they managed to hang on to BMW and still do. Despite the recent attempts by a male prostitute to blackmail the heiress...

Anyway, as is well-known, Ferdinand Porsche stole Hans Ledwinka's design for Steyr since he was in a hurry not to piss of Adolf Hitler and get the nationalised people's car into production. Incidentally, SS officers were forbidden from driving Ledwinka's Tatras, since the swing-axle rear engine layout of the car killed so many of them.

Then the Merkins waded in, Porsche was de-nazified and with his son Ferry, set up the successful Porsche company. Wendolin Wiedeking has been its chairman for years, turning down BMW when Bernd Pischetsrieder was sacked over the Rover scandal.

Meanwhile, most of DKW and the rest of the Auto-Union group was now in Soviet-controlled east germany. Some of the directors walked to Ingolstadt and set up a new DKW in its remaining (and a bit bombed) former factory. By the 1960s it was struggling and Mercedes took over, but sold the car bit into VW's Audi-NSU. Against direct orders, Audi's ex-M-B designers developed a smart lower-executive saloon in competition with VW's Nosey-bear 411, which fortunately saved the group when the 411 failed to sell...

Meanwhile, in Wolfsburg, a 'fast-tracked' development leader called Ferdinand (no coincidence!) Pi

OldDogmeat

Blimey!!

I suppose I did ask..

Are you an industry journo Nick? If not you probably should be

Moggy

That's just laughable.

Nick Graves

Nope.

But one of the reasons I despise fiction* is that the truth is far more of an interesting soap opera and far more fascinating to analyse and would often be too far-fetched to make a story believable.







*This is only partially true; I did enjoy Andreas S Berse's book (he's a German motoring writer) 'Borgward lebt', which was kind of a modern industrial espionage tale, which assumed the Borgward group had survived its destrucion in 1961...not recommended reading, since there are a lot of 'in' references that only a versed Borgward historian would get. Oh, and it's in German, too.

OldDogmeat

so, You're a historian then Nick?

You're clearly well versed in German motoring history.

..and I did get the gist of what you were saying above btw; I was a little lost with you're references and knowledge, historical background, but I grasped the point of what you were saying My 'Confused' reply was a bit of light hearted fun

One of the reasons I've found myself using this forum more than I would normally is down to the fact that there are a lot of very knowledgable and worldy contributors on here. I recently looked at another S2000 forum when this site was down for maintanence, S2000.com.. and switched off within 2 minutes of reading the first thread..

I get the impression there are a lot of people on here that are drawn to the type of subjects and conversation covered above and beyond the S2000 specifics.