VW’s Ferdinand Piech Dies at 82

Ferdinand Piech, the autocratic former chairman and CEO who pushed Volkswagen Group into a 12-brand powerhouse, died yesterday at age 82.

The grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, Piech took over VW in 1993 when the company was struggling with high costs and low quality. One of his crowning achievements came in 2012, when he led the acquisition of Porsche Cars, reversing an attempt by Porsche’s parent company to buy VW.

But the same drive that propelled VW to eminence also created a risk-averse bureaucracy that both feared and idolized its brilliant but strong-willed leader. “My desire for harmony,” he conceded in an autobiography 17 years ago, “is limited.”

Piech bulldozed pet projects into production, including such commercial failures as the poor-selling VW Phaeton luxury sedan and the Bugatti Veyron, a supercar whose production cost reportedly was six times its $1.2 million selling price.

Piech’s demanding style was widely blamed for creating an engineering culture at VW that opted to cheat on diesel emissions rather than admit that the price targets he insisted upon were unrealistic. The diesel scandal so far has cost VW more than €23 billion ($26 billion) in legal and regulatory fines, engine upgrades, vehicle buybacks and environmental restitution.

The scandal pushed Piech out as chairman in 2015. He severed his final ties with the company two years later.