Porsche-Piech Family 'Stand Behind' Volkswagen, Town Amid Crisis
Deciding that the company’s annual pre-Christmas party wasn’t a great time to be Wetblanket Wildes, the Porsche-Piech clan affirmed that it would be committed to Volkswagen amid its emissions crises (pl.) and said the company that the family-owned company would “master the situation,” according to Reuters.
The Porsche-Piech family, who owns a majority stake in Volkswagen’s parent company, told the automaker’s board and the town of Wolfsburg that the family has no intention of pulling the plug.
“I am firmly convinced that the city of Wolfsburg together with Volkswagen will master the situation and gain further strength,” Wolfgang Porsche said in a statement, according to Reuters. “The Porsche and Piech families stand behind Volkswagen and Wolfsburg as its headquarters.”
Volkswagen has shed billions in value since the company admitted cheating emissions tests in September. Since then, automaker set aside more than $8 billion to help it pay for its diesel- and gasoline-powered cars that flouted emissions tests.
Volkswagen’s newly appointed CEO Matthias Müller said he was on board with staying afloat too because it’s just a good idea.
“We have to reorientate ourselves to stay relevant in the future. For Volkswagen, but also for Wolfsburg, I am confident that this can succeed and will succeed,” Müller said, according to Reuters.
For the small city of Wolfsburg, where most of its 125,000 residents work for Volkswagen, the news was likely a relief.
According to Wolfsburger Allgemeine, Müller met with Wolfsburg Mayor Klaus Mohr to discuss the future of the automaker, who pays more than $318 million into the city’s coffers each year. According to the German newspaper, a similarly sized city in Germany collects less than 25 percent of that sum.
When Volkswagen announced its cheating scandal the city immediately announced a hiring freeze and suspended building projects, according to the newspaper.
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A historical note: Wolfsburg would not even exist were it not for Volkswagen. It was founded in 1938 as "Stadt des KdF-Wagens bei Fallersleben", home of the new factory Hitler ordered built to assemble Dr. Porsche's KdF-Wagen and its military variants. KdF stood for Strength Through Joy, a Nazi run worker's organization that provided recreational opportunities like the KdF cruise ships that would be used as troop transports in the war (do you see a pattern emerging?). In the case of the prewar Volkswagen car, German workers had part of their pay deducted through the KdF organization and they received a book and stamps for each payment. Theoretically, when the stamp book was full it could be redeemed for a new KdF-Wagen. Historians say it was a scam and no workers ever got their cars. At the urging of British occupation forces, who were also responsible for getting the VW car company running after the war, the town was renamed Wolfsburg after a local castle. Wolfburg could be considered Germany's richest city, with the highest per capita income at $128,000/yr. Detroit was once America's richest per capita city, but it might have been less dependent on the car industry than Wolfsburg is. The size of the auto industry tends to obscure the fact that Detroit and Michigan have other industries.
If the Porsche-Piech clan said it, it must be so. I believe..........