Porsche CEO Expected To Step Down After Bungled Volkswagen Takeover

That's a mistake. This guy IS Porsche. He turned them around when they were headlong for the toilet in the 80's.

I agree, but one mistake is all it takes these days to cost you your job.

This mistake was HUGE - it pretty much destroyed the ownership structure of Porsche and turning it from "independent" to wholly owned by VW. The irony is that VW has been wanting to buy Porsche for years, but Porsche has always refused that merger, until now.

BUT, you are correct in that despite this one mistake, his development vision and production improvements for Porsche was absolutely perfect: Boxster, Cayenne, Cayman - these cars all added to Porsche's bottom line and made them "the most profitable car company in the world".

Ok, didn't someone tell this dude to put in his dentures before they took that pic. Maybe he ran out of Polygrip.

Best quote of the day dhkss2002!

Try saying his name fast twenty times and you're bound to say the word "wank1ng" at least twice. LOL

I was perplexed how Porsche could get itself into this position.

From what I have read, what started all this apparently was fear a law in the Lander Volkswagen is HQ'd that prevented takeover (or required 75% ownership to do so) was going to be repealed so Wiedeking and his CFO came up with plan to acquire ownership through options.

They said it was the only way Porsche can assure independence: to make sure no one else took over VW of which they relied so much on in co-development. (Yah right). Anyway, because of that law, VW stock was comparatively cheap and they started to buy options. It was heralded as a brilliant strategy at the time.

From what I understand they got enough options to take over the company (or at least they said they did).
BUT the perfect storm hit - credit froze, so much so they couldn't borrow the money to exercise the options AND their own car sales tanked and they did not have the cash to cover their existing debts which included buying those options.

Its amazing to think in this time window no one would/could lend Porsche the money to finish this plan which was already done.

Hedge funds lost 30B euro in a day when Porsche announced they had 75% ownership and they all thought they had 1/2 of that.

There was infighting between the two related families that control both companies: Piech and Porsche that was probably behind all this, but the hired gun gets the bullet in all family businesses.

What do yo think it will mean for the Porsche brand and products to be under VAG as Lamborghini is?

He lost Porsche, and so he should be fired. However, Lamborghini survives and thrives under VAG, and hopefully Porsche will, too. VAG also owns Audi, and the Audi R8 is one of the best new product that came out in a very long time. No worries here!

The R8 is a beauty queen all show and no go. It has now power, it get's terrible fuel economy and it doesn't even have a sub 8 minute ring time. It's only redeeming factor is it's looks, and that's only if you like led christmas lights for headlights. No, the V10 isn't worth it either, for that price you can get a gallardo...

It has no*

Audi doesn't release ring times piloted by race car drivers and on race tires. The R8 times come from magazines which are known to be slower than the claimed times from other manufacturers. The difference between those times is at least ten seconds.

In the UK the Gallardo is 45% more expensive than the R8 V10, so they are not priced the same.

Well that's just silly, the market in the UK is tiny, so for the purpose of my arguement I will use the USA (I don't live there, it's just that they are a good baseline...) the v10 starts at 142.400 euro's which translates into approximately $202,000 usd (ignoring importing costs and all the related taxes) the Gallardo base price starts at $198,000

Converting European prices to US prices is completely useless. You are right that the Audi R8 V10 starts @ 202,000 converted dollars in Europe. But the Gallardo starts @ 247,000 converted dollars. So it's not unlikely that the American R8 V10 might start around 150,000 if not less.

IMO its a sad day for Porsche to be under VAG. Being an independent successful car company and to be under a huge conglomerate like VAG are two different things.

What's all the fuss about the Audi R8 5.2 anyway? This car was already released in 2006 as the Gallardo SE. The only difference is, nobody was making a big deal about it back then. The car has been tested at 12.1 secs in the 1/4 mile at 119 mph, hardly the stuff legends are made of. Regarding the N'ring times, I remember Audi snickering that they would be challenging the production car record during testing. That ended rather abruptly. I believe that Sport Auto recorded a time close to 7:50 for the 5.2 V10, however it's just speculation at present.

Bottom line, re-release a 2006 model under a new badge and have motoring journalists proclaim it to be the second coming. Finally, the e92 m3 is just as fast as the R8 in a straight line, which means it's actually quite slow.