Making official Friday what we’ve heard for a while (Der Tagesspiegel reported on Monday), Porsche CEO Matthias Müller will take the reigns at Volkswagen.
Müller replaces Martin Winterkorn, who resigned after the Environmental Protection Agency notified Volkswagen that 482,000 cars in the U.S. used an illegal “defeat device” to cheat emissions.
In a statement Müller said that restoring trust in the automaker would be his first priority:
My most urgent task is to win back trust for the Volkswagen Group – by leaving no stone unturned and with maximum transparency, as well as drawing the right conclusions from the current situation.
Before becoming CEO at Porsche, Müller led the Audi and Lamborghini brands after a long career at Audi. Müller, who is 62 years old, started at Audi in 1977. Industry insiders say that Müller will be seen as a rank-and-file friendly CEO whose monumental task may be helped by leveraging Porsche’s influence on the brand overall.
“In the past, Porsche has had a disproportionately favorable impact on the overall portfolio performance of the Volkswagen,” Jeff Thinnes, a former Mercedes Benz executive, told ABC News. “Expect to see the Porsche influence increase significantly throughout the highest echelons of the company.”
Michael Horn, CEO of Volkswagen of America, will remain, but he will now report to Prof. Dr. Winfried Vahland, previously the Chairman of the Board of Directors at Škoda, “who in this new role becomes a member of the Volkswagen brand Board of Management” responsible for North America (United States, Canada and Mexico), Volkswagen said in a statement.
Herr Mueller,
What exactly will “win back trust for the Volkswagen Group” mean for owners and dealers that are sitting on affected vehicles?
Free muffin basket!
Glad that they didn’t dump Michael Horn after all. It seems as though he’s been trying to get the people in Wolfsburg to clue in to the US market. I also read that the VW dealers in the US think he’s doing an okay job.
The US dealers sent an open letter to the supervisory board this week, pleading them to keep Horn.
If true, that says a lot – to have the underlings step up for the boss.
He has only been on the job for year. Totally removes him from all responsibility with this emissions debacle. It is like yesterday we had a post about him being hired.
Seems he has a good understanding of the us. He mentioned he came here to go to school I think, in the Passat reveal.
The US operation had nothing to do with the emissions testing anyway, it was all run out of the German HQ.
Automotive News reports that the emissions engineers involved with CARB were flown in from VW HQ. No one in the US knew what was going on, including Horn, so he gets to stay.
VW needs to find out where the culture came from. Who brought it in the door. And where they came from.
It may be a case of industrial espionage setting a cash cow for milking.
Here’s a start:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/business/international/problems-at-volkswagen-start-in-the-boardroom.html?_r=0