Now, Audi is negotiating to buy premium Italian motorcycle manufacturer Ducati. Ownership of Ducati would add another powerful brand in the company's duel with BMW, which manufactures luxury motorcycles under the same name. In the parlance of enthusiasts, bimmers are BMW cars and beemers are BMW motorycles. Ducati, a favorite of actors Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt as well as real estate titan Sam Zell, would bring some of that zeal to Audi. Founded in 1926, Ducati won 17 manufacturer's World Championships in the past 60 years and the 2011 World Superbike Championship title. Its smaller engine technology could also provide a strategic benefit to Audi.
VW's weakest presence is in the U.S., where it has lagged due to a series of management and strategic mistakes. But that could be changing with the opening of a new plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the company is building its new VW Passat midsize sedan. "The US is an anomaly for VW," said Toprak. "The company has aspirations to raise its sales here to half a million this year. They're being very aggressive."
And then there's the family. Controlled by the Porsche family, with roots in Germany and Austria, VW has hit its stride under the leadership of its chairman, Ferdinand Piech, a grandson of Beetle designer and VW founder, Ferdinand Porsche. Piech, 74, is known in the automobile industry as an exacting, demanding and uncompromising engineer – whose minions quake in their boots when he inspects their work. VW shares trade publicly; the family has control via a super-voting stock.
At the VW annual meeting on Monday, the supervisory board nominated another Piech to join it, Ursula, 55 who is Ferdinand's wife. A former nanny to the Piech family, she is the mother to three of his 12 children. The VW empire is trying to resolve a bitter and complicated feud over control between Ferdinand and another grandson, Ferry Porsche, who tried to take over VW, using the much smaller Porsche company as his base. The tables were turned after the 2008 financial crisis when VW rescued debt-laden Porsche and bought a controlling stake.
If Ursula Piech seems an unlikely figure on VW's board -- the company has described her as a kindergarten teacher -- she is seen by some as playing peacemaker among the hostile family factions. VW, against expectations, may ultimately have benefitted from the animosities within the family. The carmaker's current chairman came to VW as a career alternative when Ferry Porsche, founder, banned him and other Porsches from the sports car company. Now, with the VW Group pushing ahead, Piech looks fulfilled in what he once listed as his three great loves: "Volkswagen, family and money."
