Why Piech's departure matters - Top Gear
Ferdinand Piech, chairman of the VW Group, has resigned. Piech will be remembered, rightly, as a titan of industry, and the most important figure in the German car world since, well, since the men responsible for the original Beetle. The other, the actual engineer who designed it, was Ferdinand Porsche - Ferdinand Piech’s grandfather. Why the fuss over Piech’s departure. He wasn’t even the day-to-day CEO of the Volkswagen Group. Hadn’t been since 2002. From then until now he has actually been chair of the supervisory board, a German structure that oversees the main management board but doesn’t directly run the company day-to-day. Let’s start with the engineering. An early personal project of his was to design the Porsche 917, one of history’s most successful and awesome race cars. But he immediately started an engineering consultancy. From this came the OM617 five-cylinder diesel engine for Mercedes. It was Merc’s first premium passenger-car diesel engine. Remember those things as we meander further through Piech’s later career. Source: www.topgear.com
