A Very Brief History of VW and Porsche

Image by The Brucer via Flickr

You probably know of Porsche’s attempt to take over VW after it got 51% of its shares. You also probably know that Porsche was unable to take it over and is now in so much trouble that it has to be taken over by VW. It has been described by BusinessWeek as a Teutonic Turnabout. As if this were not interesting enough in itself, I just read this story from Der Spiegel. The Porsche company, which was founded in 1930 by Ferdinand Porsche, never built any car of its own until it was given a contract by Adolf Hitler to build a Volkswagen – a people’s car. The article is a brief history of the Nazi roots of the two companies.