Ferdinand Piëch was not a normal car company boss. Where other executives talked markets and margins, Piëch talked engineering. Where rivals played it safe, he signed off projects that made accountants physically ill. The results were some of the most extraordinary cars ever built.
Piëch ran the Volkswagen Group from 1993 to 2002 as CEO, then as Chairman until 2015. In that time he oversaw an era of almost reckless engineering ambition. As Top Gear noted in their Touareg R50 feature, the list of self-owning, zero-business-case leviathans from this era is both hilarious and brilliant.
The Bugatti Veyron – 987bhp, 253mph, and a development cost so enormous that VW reportedly lost money on every one sold. It existed simply because Piëch said it should.
The VW Phaeton – built to out-Mercedes the S-Class, featuring a W12 engine option, and a commercial disaster because nobody could understand why a VW should cost £70,000. An engineering triumph nonetheless.
The VW XL1 – 313mpg through obsessive aerodynamic and weight reduction engineering. It proved a point nobody had asked to be proven.
And the Touareg R50 – a V10 turbodiesel SUV producing 627lb ft of torque and capable of towing a Boeing 747. It existed because someone in product planning thought there might be a market for it, and Piëch let them build it.
What connects all of these is a philosophy that has largely disappeared: build it first, justify it later. At VW Owners Club, we celebrate the full breadth of VW’s history – from the humble Polo to Piëch’s greatest engineering excesses. Join free today.