These are brutally difficult times for automakers worldwide, but as crises go, this one could be a lot worse for Wendelin Wiedeking, Porsche's chief executive for the past 16 years. Thanks to an astute mixture of long-term strategic foresight and short-term financial wizardry, Wiedeking has Porsche headed into this downturn in an extraordinarily strong position. The company is sitting on a $20 billion mountain of capital - more money than the U.S. government is injecting into GM, Ford, and Chrysler combined.
More important, Wiedeking, 58, has secured Porsche's future through an audacious David vs. Goliath takeover of Volkswagen, Germany' largest automaker and a company that has so far weathered the crisis better than most of its peers. "Wiedeking very cleverly purchased a life insurance policy for Porsche by buying VW," says Peter Schmidt, an auto consultant based in Britain. "He's a brilliant, focused leader who grabbed VW for peanuts and is making a fortune out of it."
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