for those interested I post a story of DER SPIEGEL, Germany’s leading news magazine. It’s in my opinion among the best articles of The Porsche-VW saga to date:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,637243,00.html

But, of course, your editorial is also a great piece of art, Mr. Minzenmay

It will be interesting to see in coming months how Piech uses his authority to direct his growing empire, and what parts fare better or worse.

I think they do, and in fact worry a great deal more than nobodies like you or I.

It’s just not “worry” as you or I understand the concept.

The more self-important you are, the more of an issue your legacy is. There is a reason why Rockefeller, Carnegie, Nobel and the like named prizes and foundations after themselves very late in their lives, and it has a lot to do with not wanting to go down in the books as evil bastards.

If only we as a society could figure out a way to clone those conditions for all our businesses. Unfortunately, Toyota is the exception rather than the rule, even in Japan.

And, to be fair, Toyota has it’s weaknesses. A lack of inspiring product, for one. That doesn’t matter to a lot of people, but imagine if Toyota didn’t have the technical developments from Europe to keep them honest.

Remember Henry Ford’s famous quote about history: “History is more or less bunk.”

I don’t think people like this worry too much about what some future ‘history’ might say. They are too busy making history now.

History can be very unkind to important people, especially if they make a point of trying to remain so.

You know what’s wonderful for taking executives’ eyes off the goal of running a successful business? An interesting corporate succession.

They must be allowing themselves reserved grins over in Aichi, watching one of their biggest rivals mire itself in infighting. It must be about as much fun as watching Ford, GM and Chrysler do the same from about 1975 onwards.

Errr, well, he is kinda important…

- One of the richest men in Europe.
- Heir to one of the biggest automotive dynasties in the world.
- Lead engineer for some of the most successful automotive technology ever produced (in many genres from racing to production vehicles)
- A leader of companies employing more than 400,000 persons world-wide
- A father to more than a dozen offspring

Sounds like a pretty important person to me …

Ferdinand Porsche was a household name in Germany by the time Hitler came along. Porsche’s exploits in car design and racing had already well established his credentials with the general public. So you could say, Hitler’s intent in backing Porsche was to “ride on his coattails” so to speak. It also served Hitler’s purpose to be a lever against the established automotive powers at the time in Germany, who viewed Hitler with much suspicion.

By contrast, Ledwinka was, although technically talented, a bit of a rube. It wouldn’t have served Hitler’s purpose to back Ledwinka, who, I don’t believe, had any public standing at all.

As often happens in life, it was a situation where politics and personal agendas played a huge role.

The concept of “stealing” an idea in business can sometimes be a little vague. It’s often not who comes up with the idea, it’s who gets the idea commercialized successfully. This vagueness is, I believe, even reflected in patent law.

A prime example of how things can go is the graphical/mouse user interface for computers, which we all take for granted now: Developed from original work by a research scientist at Stanford University in the 1960s, then first produced in the early 1980s by Xerox, who then sued Apple for cribbing the idea after Apple introduced the Macintosh, while Apple itself was suing Microsoft for “stealing” the same idea. Microsoft, the third party removed from the actual idea creation, won that suit in the end, I believe, patents be damned.

In the end, it’s who successfully commercializes the idea who is the winner. The inventor himself often gets left in the dust. There’s probably no argument from anyone here that VW/Porsche successfully commercialized the idea beyond everybody’s wildest dreams.

Of course, the bad feelings on the part of the individuals and families involved can last for generations.

Tatra continued the legal battle with the postwar VW company. The case was eventually resolved with the above mentioned 3 million DM settlement, in 1961. The matter is still a sensitive subject in both Wolfsburg and Stuttgart. While VW and the Porsche company have perhaps grudgingly acknowledged that Dr. Porsche’s boxer motors were not completely original, the matter of Josef Ganz’ 1933 Standard Superior “Volkswagen” is even more sensitive.

While BMW and Mercedes-Benz both acknowledge Ganz’ important contributions to BMW’s first in-house designed automobile and to the landmark M-B 170, he’s persona non grata with the Porsche family of companies.

“Ledwinka’s concepts were copied by Ferdinand Porsche, who knew Ledwinka personally and exchanged ideas with him. Tatra sued Volkswagen about the breaches of the similarities in the Volkswagen design which has been virtually copying Tatra T97. The lawsuit vanished as the Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938, and Hitler ordered the production of Tatra T97 to be halted. Only 500 cars were produced.

Porsche’s successors later had to acknowledge the influence of Ledwinka’s Tatra models on the Porsche-designed Kdf-Wagen of 1938 (later known as the VW Beetle), and a new post-war lawsuit resulted in a DM3,000,000 settlement paid by Volkswagen to Ringhoffer-Tatra.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Ledwinka

I always felt there is a connection with Prof Hans Ledwinka. Now i found it.

Oh, and he also stole the layout of the Volkswagen from Jewish engineer Josef Ganz and his air cooled boxer motors infringed on the patents of Hans Ledwinka at Tatra.

Thank you, Thomas, and thank you, Bertel. Don’t stop now but bring on the next chapter, please.

“Wiedeking is a pimp, he could have never outfought Porsche. I never knew it until this day but it was Piech all along.”