But there’s clearly more at stake here; you don’t need to go out and buy a supplier with more than twice your market capitalisation simply to secure a useful working relationship. Wiedeking also saw the value in VW, and how its share price would benefit from both the abolition of the Volkswagen law and the acquisitive attention of hard-headed, profitable Porsche. He was right; Porsche’s 31% stake is estimated to have cost just €5bn, but VW is now valued at around €50bn. VW’s share price leapt 14% in August alone, and Porsche’s has increased by more than a third this year.

Suddenly, Porsche’s takeover starts to make industrial and financial sense – but there’s far more to this story than short-term commercial advantage. The first Volkswagen, the Beetle, was designed in the 1930s by Ferdinand Porsche. After the war, the Porsche family lost control over VW; the Beetle was offered to France as reparation, but the French carmakers vetoed the idea and instead Beetle production at Wolfsburg was restarted by a British army officer.

Around the same time, Ferdinand’s son Ferry established Porsche as a sports car manufacturer, and all the voting stock in the company is still held by the 50-strong Porsche clan. The family retains close ties with the much larger firm built on the work of its patriarch, however; it has the exclusive and very lucrative rights to sell Volkswagens in Austria and some other European states, while its dealer group, Europe’s largest, is hugely profitable.

More importantly, the modern Volkswagen Group was shaped by the most talented scion of the Porsche dynasty: Ferdinand Piech, Ferdinand Porsche’s grandson. A supremely talented engineer and manager, he helped create arguably the greatest sports car in history, the Porsche 911, and arguably the most beautiful racing car ever, the Porsche 917, while at the family firm. In 1972 an agreement that no family member should be involved in Porsche’s management saw him move to Audi, owned by VW. He developed the Audi Quattro, the greatest rally car ever, and made its four-wheel drive technology the hallmark of Audi’s road cars, laying the foundation for Audi’s subsequent, extraordinary sales success. Vorsprung durch Technik is his personal motto.

Piech became chairman and chief executive of Audi in 1988 and of the Volkswagen Group in 1993. He set about dramatically increasing the product portfolio of the Group’s existing brands – VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda – and driving the business upmarket with the purchase of Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti and the creation of luxury Volkswagens like the Phaeton saloon, which competes with top-end Mercedes and BMW cars. In his time as chief executive, the Group’s vehicle output more than doubled.

Piech retired as chief executive in 2002, at the age of 65, and became chairman of VW’s supervisory board. He is also the second-largest shareholder in Porsche. Semi-retirement proved predictably frustrating for the car industry’s most charismatic, talismanic leader, who plainly feels he still has work to finish at VW. He clashed frequently with his successor, former BMW boss Bernd Pischetsrieder, until the latter resigned last year in frustration at Piech’s increasing influence over VW as the stake held by Porsche grew.

Although Wiedeking makes a strong case for the logic of Porsche’s growing stake in VW, few doubt that it was driven as much by Piech’s desire to continue his control of VW by other means. To nobody’s surprise, Pischetsrieder was replaced by former Audi chief executive and Piech protégé Martin Winterkorn. Piech himself seldom gives interviews, but his cousin Wolfgang Porsche, chairman of Porsche’s supervisory board, doesn’t deny that the desire to recapture VW for the family of the man who provided its foundation 80 years ago “might have played a subordinate role” in Porsche’s pursuit of it.

Winterkorn is believed to be working on a 10-year plan for the Volkswagen Group that will see it break even in the US by 2010 and target Toyota’s 9% operating profit with massive improvements in productivity. The plan will be unveiled by the end of the year and is likely to coincide with Porsche finally taking a majority stake in the company. With a new chief executive and a new majority owner, VW will acquire a dynamism it has never before enjoyed. The real boss and the greatest beneficiary is Ferdinand Piech, however; not only will he once more effectively control the Volkswagen Group he largely created, he will own it too, and will have seen his personal wealth skyrocket as the value of his stake in Porsche has increased beyond recognition. So much for semi-retirement. EB