Family Ties: Ferdinand Piëch

The story goes that in 2002 Ferdinand Piëch drove 100 kilometres to a board meeting in a Volkswagen 1-Litre car, which would become the XL1, to prove a point – and get a bit of press. Amazingly, he used less than a litre of fuel on the way.

A decade later, in 2012, he and then VW CEO Martin Winkerkorn repeated the trick and drove a pair of pre-production Volkswagen XL1s to another board meeting. Within 12 months the car entered limited production, still able to cover 100km with change from a litre and able to cover half that on full electric power. Its cd, its aerodynamic efficiency, was a barely believable 0.189. 

Not for the first time, Piëch’s vision had become a reality and around 200 were made. Not for the first time, Piëch had found a way to get his way.

Wind back to the late 1960s and a young Piëch not only turned Porsche’s fortunes around but also turned sports car racing on its head. The firm’s derivative racing range, each new car a development of the last, needed a revolution to put the manufacturer truly on top of the world stage. The fringes, picking up wins here and there when others failed, were not enough for the new head of motorsport; it was time to start dominating. 

The Porsche 917 was the result, a lethal tour de force that was so fast it would be effectively outlawed with two Le Mans wins under its belt.

Piëch’s vision had become a reality; he'd got his way. Grandad’s company was an international marvel.

But, Piëch's baby rendered redundant, a new challenge was required and he moved a couple of hundred kilometres away to Ingolstadt.

Once again, Piëch had a vision and the motorsport world would be the place to fulfil it. Or rather he believed in the vision of a small group of engineers, Jörg Bensinger in particular, at Audi.

Whether Bensinger liked it or not, the World Rally Championship, like the World Sportscar Championship had been, was ripe for some big-money might and Audi inadvertently had the tool for the job. Mixed surface motorsport needed more than the rear-drive of the dominant Ford Escorts, and briefly Talbots: four-wheel drive, Bensinger’s ‘quattro’, was the solution. .

Piëch fully bought in and backed Bensinger to the hilt. It would happen, he would ensure of it, and success would follow on the road and in rallying. Perhaps less success than we care to remember, but it still chalked up 23 WRC event wins and two world championships.

A turbocharged five cylinder, at its peak pumping out well in excess of 400bhp, could hardly be more removed from the world’s most efficient, and perhaps innovative, machine. Yet the quattro and XL1 are bound together by the ruthless visionary, at times to the point of belligerence, that was Ferdinand Piëch.

You’ll find the pair together among the Family Ties display on Sunday 9 October at the Scramble, thanks to VW UK and Audi UK.