Porsche Puts Audi in the Back Seat
Posted by Dale Buss on December 9, 2010 04:00 PM
Audi has been advancing by leaps and bounds in the US market lately, but the Audi brand juggernaut has run into a bit of a speed bump at home in Germany.
As top management of Audi parent Volkswagen continues to set the stage for its loudly declared, long-term initiative to overtake Toyota as the world’s best-selling automotive group, it seems that Audi has taken a back seat to new internal rival Porsche when it comes to at least one area: designing the guts of the flagship vehicles for VW’s far-flung global fleet.
Automotive News Europe reports that Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn has tapped Porsche – the VW Group’s 10th brand in the wake of the companies' merger last year – to develop the mechanical platform underlying the ultra-expensive Porsche Panamera and future Bentleys. It also will be responsible for a sports-car platform for Porsche, Audi and Lamborghini brands.
Audi, which had strived to get the assignment for the future engineering of the top-shelf luxury platform, will have to be satisfied with continuing responsibility for the less-expensive platform that underpins many Audis. Both designations by Winterkorn are part of his strategy of streamlining development costs to fewer vehicle platforms to give VW a key competitive advantage against Toyota.
The move seems to make sense for Volkswagen as a whole. Winterkorn gets more control over the engineering of the company’s evolving top platform. Yet he takes sensible advantage of all those slick Porsche engineers whose work long has been at the heart of creating the crisp handling that has defined the Porsche brand.
(Above: Porsche touts its design prowess against other luxury auto brands in a cocky 2010 campaign — Form and Function: the Battle, featuring Billy Zane and Karel Roden.)
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