Personality and management style
An engineer by trade, Ferdinand Piëch was both known for his intricate involvement in product development from a technical standpoint, as well as his domineering personality. Automotive blog Jalopnik said of Piëch, "He is the mad genius behind much of Porsche and Audi's racing successes as well as VW's all-out engineering and luxury push from the early 2000s. That's what gave us cars like the Bugatti Veyron and the 12-cylinder VW Phaeton." Fellow automotive executive Bob Lutz described Piëch as "one of the most successful leaders in the automotive business" and "the greatest living product guy" in the automobile industry.
Automotive News described Piëch as "a world-class eccentric but a figure of transcendent importance in the history of cars and car companies" who has had "The strangest and possibly most significant automotive industry career this side of Henry Ford". In their obituary, The Guardian said of Piëch, "His stewardship of VW has been indisputably successful. Piech will go down in history as an automotive legend, in the same class as Gottlieb Daimler, Henry Ford and Kiichiro Toyoda."
Piëch has been described as being socially awkward and having an abrasive personality; some automotive journalists who have encountered Piëch described him as being uncomfortable to be around. Automotive News once noted, "Many of his CEO peers said they could not hold a normal conversation with him. Discussions could be punctuated with long stretches of unexplained silence." Piëch himself has acknowledged that he occasionally struggles to relate to other people and understand their feelings.
As Piëch rose to the top of Volkswagen in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then-CEO Carl Hahn took notice of Piëch's poor social skills and tried to position him as a technocrat kept behind closed doors. Hahn was particularly bothered by how Piëch behaved during a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine; while a Shinto priest was showing the shrine's collection of vintage swords, Piëch examined one and told the priest that it was a fake. Subsequently, Hahn presented the Audi Avus quattro concept car himself at the 1991 Tokyo Motor Show and didn't allow Piëch to take part, which infuriated Piëch due to his extensive personal involvement in the Avus quattro's creation.
Piëch was widely interested in pushing technological boundaries in automotive development, especially as the head of Audi. Automotive News noted of this, "The company's slogan "Vorsprung durch Technik" was the personification of Piech – the belief that technology was the answer to all problems in the auto business. Audi was the test bed to prove his theory and the springboard for his ambition."
Piëch often spearheaded the development of audacious vehicles or oversaw business decision and strategies that baffled analysts, but still proved beneficial for the company as a whole. In recounting some of the extraordinary vehicles Volkswagen put in production under Piëch's watch, Wired noted that he alone pushed the Bugatti Veyron supercar into production, despite objection from other executives as well as the fact that Volkswagen lost what is believed to be millions on every Veyron sold: "Consider that for a moment. Long past the average retirement age, this gent greenlit one of the largest automotive losses in history and managed to keep his job. Moreover, he was hailed as a hero."
Piëch was known as an aggressive and demanding manager, who set both lofty and extremely specific goals and standards for projects. He would often become personally involved in vehicle development, such as how he oversaw the development of the Audi 100's aerodynamics himself, keeping it secret from even Audi's top engineers to prevent any crucial details of the car's aerodynamic capabilities from leaking to competitors.
Piëch often liked to ride along with automotive journalists during press test drives and would consider their critiques to improve Volkswagen's vehicles. Car and Driver writer John Phillips recounted how when he test drove the Volkswagen New Beetle during its launch in 1997, Piëch rode along and asked for his opinion on how its chassis and driving dynamics could be improved. Similarly, Piëch once demanded that an Automobile reviewer take the Volkswagen Phaeton up to its top speed while he rode along in the back seat.
With a leadership style described as "old fashioned", Piëch was known for his prolific firing of subordinates throughout his career, particularly how he engineered the ousting of former Volkswagen CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder and Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking. According to Piëch, he fired any subordinate who "makes the same mistake twice". The Guardian noted, "Piech was known for his ability to outmanoeuvre competitors by stoking internal rivalries to his own advantage, even if it resulted in turning against his own managers, including the VW chief executive Bernd Pischetsrieder, to side with VW's labour leaders." Piëch leveraged this reputation to use threats and intimidation to get subordinates to meet his lofty goals; Wired described Piëch as "Machiavellian" and "an autocrat's autocrat".
Bob Lutz said of his management style, "It's what I call a reign of terror and a culture where performance was driven by fear and intimidation[...]That management style gets short-term results, but it's a culture that's extremely dangerous. Look at dictators. Dictators invariably wind up destroying the very countries they thought their omniscience and omnipotence would make great. It's fast and it's efficient, but at huge risk." He would also describe Piëch as a "mad genius" that while he respected, he would never want to work for or with at any capacity.
Lutz, CNBC, the American documentary TV series Dirty Money, among others, have claimed that the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal is the result of the ruthless and tyrannical corporate culture Piëch installed at the company.
Although Piëch had tried a hostile takeover against Suzuki in 2010 and threatened its management, Suzuki won the case to terminate its partnership with Volkswagen at the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce after Piëch fell from power, and could dissolve the capital tie-up until September 2015.
