Rolling in my basket the other day, Big Dog couldn’t help but notice a nice old picture of Teflon (‘it was nothing to do with me, it was all their fault’) Bernd in a copy of Car magazine. Now as you know, I’m a good-looking pup, but even I couldn’t match the look of sheer smugness that this CEO felt was justified.
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But this is kind of typical of the bloke, let’s be honest. After one of the biggest cock-ups in the automotive industry of the 1990s, a job sorting deckchairs in Travemunde might have seemed on the cards, but he bounced back with one of the biggest automotive jobs going.
And at first glance it might be argued that his reputation for bringing peace, harmony and success has been fully lived up to at VAG. Profits are through the floor, the cars are getting panned for poor build and falling quality and the brands are such a mess that the “Stylish Sports” brand Seat has two MPVs and there’s a new Toledo that looks like a spy shot of a future Avantime. Meanwhile, Skoda, the “Interesting Family” brand, has the dullest new car to be launched this decade in the Octavia and no MPV at all (the Roomster taking as long to appear as the endless questionnaire they made me fill out at Frankfurt).
But the worst crime is the Golf. The old one may not have been the best drive on the planet, but God it looked so good: square yet purposeful, chunky and clean. The new one looks like a soggy soufflé, all bulbous and sagging. In fact it’s so bad that the back bumper can’t be colour coded or I presume it would look like a whale’s bum.
So, suddenly you have a big load of cheap plastic from the rear wheel arch. I mean, which noodle signed off this thing? Surely Teflon above all people must know that most customers can’t drive for herring – after all this guy proved it by bending a McLaren, so the multilink thingy with the advanced whatsit is just so much scrap to 99.9% of the public so long as it goes around corners; the customer wanted fabulous quality with value but got cheap air vents instead. And what did Teflon say? Well it wasn’t his fault you see; it’s the blokes in marketing!
Two years in the job though, and it’s really starting to look like the buck stops with him. Sure, he was left with a rather mixed legacy. Everyone was clearly far too terrified of Ferdie Jr., so we got the W8 engine (just how big did they think the market was for hopelessly inefficient company and rental cars?) the Phaeton (very big company and rental cars?) the VR5 (come on, admit it, you first thought it was a misprint in the preview pack), a V sorry W or is that X 16 for a hyper car and a 4×4 for the masses with €70k to spend, while the luxury brand that defined the 4×4 road car had an estate!
To sum up, shareholder value be damned!
VAG ended up with a series of engineering and brand management strategies to suit Ferdie Jr.’s very personal vanity. But worse, perhaps overcome with the need to sort the problem of the Dodgy Jesuit and his flying filing cabinets, Ferdie Jr. failed to address many of the key structural issues that bedevil the company to this day, like the so called Haustarifvertrag which leaves VW’s labour costs at the top of the table.
But this was surely the great opportunity for Teflon Man. By now we should have seen a truly convincing strategy plan for the future, we should know where the company is going with its brands, its production and most importantly for a company that feels it can near premium price it’s main brand, its products. What did we get? The Polo Dune……oh well done Teflon Man! Without China, VW would be in a desperate state. But with that golden goose looking like it’s been well and truly cooked, some fresh ideas are clearly required.
There’s hope though. The hiring of Dr. Death after he operated on the Chrysler patient is a step in the right direction and indicates Teflon’s commitment to breaking down the civil service mentality that pervades so much of VAG thinking. And boy is it needed; just a couple of years ago I was given a trip around Wolfsburg and the guide proudly told me how many thousands of extra workers they’d taken on, in a plant where workers already seemed to be watching workers work. Only my leash stopped me falling out of the Kubelwagen in shock. But cost saves will achieve nothing independently; let’s hope there’s a genius in product and brand planning who we haven’t yet heard about, set to release some fabulous new toys for us to play with as part of a regeneration master plan. If that’s the case then VAG may just be able to avoid becoming yet more Toyota Bait.
But till then Teflon Man, please put away the big cigars and try, just for a while, to look like a bloke who doesn’t have more money than he knows what to do with. Despite the way your politicising minions behave to you, you aren’t an infallible God, you’re a Bavarian; so look instead like a bloke with a company in real trouble, a workforce who will for the first time experience some real pain and someone with a need to prove himself to a world, a workforce and a dog!
– Big Dog
The strong views expressed in this column are exclusively those of Big Dog and are not necessarily reflective of those of the publisher, editor or other members of the just-auto editorial team. just-auto gives Big Dog an occasional platform (and dog biscuits).
