VW/Audi/Porsche connection

[Andrei Talalaevskii <andrei@felix.physics.sunysb.edu>]

Winslow Douglas asked:



One more question to the collective. Don't crucify me because I think
this was answered before, What is the relation between Audi & Porsche? I
already know that Audi falls under the Volkswagen umbrella, but I
remember reading a old motor Trend magazine and they were saying that
the 944 is not a true Porsche because they raided Volkswagen/Audi parts
bin to construct this car.
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This is answered in great detail in the book "VW Chronicle". I got it from
Borders. It is written very competently (as far as I can judge) and is
full of beautiful illustration. The roots of Porsche-VW connection starts
from the idea of Ferdinand Porsche to build a people's car. The idea found
it's support in Nazi Government and the plant in
Wolfsburg was built from scratch under Hitler's order. Porsche was running
it. Soon the war started. Thus, the plant, not called VW at that time yet,
was working mainly on military machines... 

This people's car was Beetle.... who wnet into mass production after the
war only...

The connection never ended, Current CEO of VW is a grandson of Porsche the
First. However, unlike in Audi's case, VW was never even close to owning
Porsche.

As for your particular question, as far as I remember from that
book, Porsche Buro, whose influence on VW was very strong at those times,
approached VW with the idea to build together a sports car.

After some time and significant expenses from both sides VW chiefs lost
their interests in the project and sold or gave to Ferry Porsche (son of
Ferdinand Porsche) who was by that time a head of Porsche Company a Carte
Blanche to continue on his own and that's how 924 came out. 944 was
developed out of 924. It is still a Porsche, but there is a lot of VAG
contribution in it.

I hope things haven't mixed up in my head. If they did, please don't be
cruel.

Andrei