Engineer, industrialist and businessman who chaired the Volkswagen Group and was described as a ‘brilliant despot’
In his five-decade career it would be fair to say that the engineer and industrialist Ferdinand Piëch, who has died aged 82, was far more interested in getting results than making friends. A technically brilliant but socially awkward man, Piëch was admired for his bullish achievements at Porsche, Audi and VW, but not widely loved, certainly not by the 40 or so executives he is thought to have sacked during his career when they failed to match his exacting standards.
Nobody was permitted to make the same mistake twice. He ousted board members without blinking and eliminated whole layers of executives if he thought they were not performing. An engineer by training, Piëch could not be blinded by science or excuses from his underlings. Obsessed with build quality, he once promised to sack a whole room full of engineers if they did not get the tight panel gaps he wanted on the latest Golf.
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