Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: we are continuing with our story about Volkswagen. And in
Speaker 1: our last episode, we made our way up to ninety
Speaker 1: two when Dr Carl hand, the former head of Volkswagen
Speaker 1: America and the person whom former CEO Heinrich Nordhoff had
Speaker 1: handpicked way back in the nineteen sixties to be the
Speaker 1: leader of the company, would actually fulfill that vision. In
Speaker 1: the interim, Volkswagen had leaders who had pushed the company
Speaker 1: beyond its dependence upon the Type one car. Type one
Speaker 1: is what we in America called the Volkswagen Beatle. Now,
Speaker 1: in fact, Volkswagen's manufacturing facilities in Germany had already stopped
Speaker 1: producing the Beatle by early nineteen eighty. The original plan
Speaker 1: was to stop in nineteen seventy nine, but as they
Speaker 1: were getting towards the end of the year, they realized
Speaker 1: that they had way too many orders to fill. They
Speaker 1: had to actually keep going, keep producing beyond when they
Speaker 1: had planned to stop, in order to meet those demands
Speaker 1: and to keep building that reliable little car. By mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, that had changed and production had shifted to
Speaker 1: Volkswagen's facilities in Brazil and Mexico, so the Beetle was
Speaker 1: still being produced there, but was no longer being produced
Speaker 1: in Germany. While the company made far fewer of the
Speaker 1: Type one vehicles, the facility in Puebla, Mexico churned them
Speaker 1: out all the way up until two thousand three. That
Speaker 1: means Volkswagen was making the Type one air cooled rear
Speaker 1: engine Volkswagen Beetle for nearly sixty years without an eruption.
Speaker 1: In Mexico, the car became a popular option for tack
Speaker 1: sea drivers because the vehicles were small, they had good traction,
Speaker 1: and they were easy to maintain due to their simple
Speaker 1: mechanical structure. Eventually, in the Mexican government outlawed the Beatle
Speaker 1: as a taxi cab car, deeming it too unsafe for
Speaker 1: that purpose. Oh and before I move on, I should
Speaker 1: at least mention that Volkswagen began making the Jetta model
Speaker 1: of vehicles starting in nineteen seventy nine. The design of
Speaker 1: the Jetta aimed at a customer that wanted something a
Speaker 1: bit larger than the Volkswagen Golf known as the Rabbit
Speaker 1: here in the United States, and the Jetta is one
Speaker 1: of the models Volkswagen still produces today and is consistently
Speaker 1: one of their more popular models. It also comes in
Speaker 1: a lot of different configurations. Two door, four door, five door.
Speaker 1: I had to mention it because my producer Tari used
Speaker 1: to drive one, though she drove a more recent model
Speaker 1: than in nineteen seventy nine Jetta. I imagine she's nodding
Speaker 1: yes in case he can't hear her nod. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about Volkswagen the company from the time Doctor Han
Speaker 1: took over up to present day now. One measure that
Speaker 1: Han took was to work with China to establish Volkswagen's
Speaker 1: presence in the vast Chinese market. In the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: China was just starting to enter into a massive economic transformation,
Speaker 1: one that we're still seeing play out today. Volkswagen would
Speaker 1: be one of the first Western automotive companies to work
Speaker 1: with China. In fact, it was the first Western automotive
Speaker 1: company to work with China to create an early automobile
Speaker 1: industry in that nation. It would be incredibly important both
Speaker 1: to China and to Volkswagen itself. After all, China has
Speaker 1: the largest population of any country in the world, and
Speaker 1: for several years Volkswagen was the only non Chinese car
Speaker 1: company operating within that country, and as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: that meant Volkswagen was able to get a big jump
Speaker 1: on top of the other car company. Today, Volkswagen and
Speaker 1: its partners manufactured vehicles and parts in more than thirty
Speaker 1: manufacturing facilities throughout China. Dr Hahn also continued Volkswagen's practice
Speaker 1: of acquiring other companies, and acquisitions are going to play
Speaker 1: a really big part in today's episode as well. Here later,
Speaker 1: but he oversaw the completion of Volkswagen's acquisition of fift
Speaker 1: of the Spanish car company Seat in nineteen eight six,
Speaker 1: as well as gaining a substantial stake in a check
Speaker 1: company called Skota in nineteen These two companies would be
Speaker 1: the first non German subsidiaries for Volkswagen. The first subsidiary,
Speaker 1: if you remember from the last episode, was Audi that
Speaker 1: was another German car company, though Volkswagen would later acquire
Speaker 1: more ownership of both car companies, eventually owning both outright,
Speaker 1: and Volkswagen would become a leading car company in Europe,
Speaker 1: particularly in the southern and Eastern European markets. The subsidiaries
Speaker 1: make talking about Volkswagen a little tricky, as there's the
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Group that includes all the companies and brands like Audi,
Speaker 1: in addition to Volkswagen the car company, which is specifically
Speaker 1: the company that makes branded Volkswagen vehicles like the Beatle.
Speaker 1: While Volkswagen was growing through these acquisitions, it was also
Speaker 1: in some ways following a plan very similar to what
Speaker 1: had been the cornerstone for the company during much of
Speaker 1: its history. So for decades, the Beatle had been the
Speaker 1: primary product from Volkswagen. While Volkswagen was finally retiring the
Speaker 1: Beatle in this time, it was essentially doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: It was following the same play with a different sensible car,
Speaker 1: which would be the Golf. It's not incorrect to say
Speaker 1: the Golf was intended for the same type of consumer
Speaker 1: who previously would have purchased a Beatle, but Han recognized
Speaker 1: that the strategy alone would not be enough to sustain
Speaker 1: the company, and in fact, it was depending too heavily
Speaker 1: upon any one veha a model is a recipe for
Speaker 1: potential disaster if markets should change. With that in mind,
Speaker 1: Han gave more freedom to the Audi division. Now, this
Speaker 1: really isn't an episode about Aldi, so I don't want
Speaker 1: to get too far off track here, but it would
Speaker 1: mean that the Audi brand was given a bit more
Speaker 1: slack to develop cars for a higher end market than
Speaker 1: Volkswagen's Golf catered to. And it would give Audi the
Speaker 1: the the freedom to start experimenting more and uh really
Speaker 1: branching out from what it had been doing. Breaking free
Speaker 1: of a perception that Audi was a brand that made
Speaker 1: cars that old people liked. It was able to get
Speaker 1: past that an Audi for the most part, operated as
Speaker 1: an independent division within Volkswagen. Around this time forward, one
Speaker 1: enormous political event that would hit close to home for
Speaker 1: doctor Han quite literally was the reunification of Germany. Towards
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen eighties, it became clear that
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union days were numbered, and that entire story
Speaker 1: is far too big to fit into an episode about Volkswagen.
Speaker 1: But one of the many consequences of the Soviet Union's
Speaker 1: collapse was that East and West Germany would reunite into
Speaker 1: a whole nation. Now, this was when the Berlin Wall,
Speaker 1: which once stood as a symbol of oppression and authoritarianism
Speaker 1: was pulled down to the ground. For Volkswagen, it would
Speaker 1: mean the opportunity to establish new manufacturing facilities and what
Speaker 1: had previously been Soviet controlled territory. As for dr Han,
Speaker 1: the meaning was much more personal. He had grown up
Speaker 1: in Chimnets, which is in eastern Germany. After World War Two,
Speaker 1: his family left the region as that region was falling
Speaker 1: to Soviet control. In fact, Dr hans father was one
Speaker 1: of the founders of Auto Union, which would later evolve
Speaker 1: into AUDI. So for Dr Han this was more than
Speaker 1: just Volkswagen growing its production facilities. It was coming back
Speaker 1: to a part of Germany that hadn't been you know,
Speaker 1: approachable for years. It had been behind Soviet control, behind
Speaker 1: the Iron Curtain. Part of hans reasoning, in fact, a
Speaker 1: large part of it when it came to opening up
Speaker 1: manufacturing facilities, was that relying upon a centralized production model
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily efficient or cost effective. He wanted to build
Speaker 1: more plants in various regions so that the production facilities
Speaker 1: weren't that far away from the people who were actually
Speaker 1: buying the cars. That really cut down costs. If you're
Speaker 1: building the stuff near where the people who want the
Speaker 1: stuff can get the stuff, then you're cutting down costs significantly.
Speaker 1: So he was looking ahead to a more unified Europe
Speaker 1: and he wanted to build a car company capable of
Speaker 1: flourishing in that environment. At the same time, expanding operations
Speaker 1: costs a lot of money, and Volkswagen was spending a
Speaker 1: ton to build out these manufacturing facilities. Moreover, Han felt
Speaker 1: that the European market would serve as sort of the
Speaker 1: foundation for the rest of Volkswagen's businesses around the world,
Speaker 1: so most of his focus was on developing the European
Speaker 1: market and investing in that market, which meant Volkswagen's presence
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world, notably in North America
Speaker 1: and the United States, really began to fade quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Fans of Volkswagen in the US felt like they were
Speaker 1: being neglected, something that stung more than a little bit
Speaker 1: considering the fact that Dr Han had once been the
Speaker 1: head of the American division of Volkswagen. The popularity of
Speaker 1: Volkswagen in America had been on shaky ground since nine
Speaker 1: when sales figures dipped from year to year. It went
Speaker 1: down from nineteen one. Now the numbers fluctuated a bit
Speaker 1: over the next several years. Sometimes they would go down
Speaker 1: quite a bit, sometimes they would rebound a little bit.
Speaker 1: But the general trend from nineteen eighty one all the
Speaker 1: way to nineteen nine three was to see declines in sales.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure most of you know that's the opposite
Speaker 1: of what you want to see in a sales chart.
Speaker 1: And when I say a decline, I mean there was
Speaker 1: a really big drop off. So back in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: Volkswagen sold around three hundred thirty eight thousand vehicles in
Speaker 1: the US market. In that number dropped down to fewer
Speaker 1: than fifty thousand vehicles. So three d thirty eight thousand
Speaker 1: down to less than fifty thousand. That's catastrophic. So what
Speaker 1: caused that number to drop down so low in the
Speaker 1: United States? Well, one reason was that the general consensus
Speaker 1: was that the cars coming out of the American manufacturing
Speaker 1: plant were substandard, and another was that the cars coming
Speaker 1: out of Mexico were similarly unreliable, and the Puebla manufacturing
Speaker 1: facility in Mexico was experiencing a ton of different problems.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't until nineteen when Volkswagen introduced the third
Speaker 1: generation of the Goulf and the third generation of the
Speaker 1: Jetta models in the US that sales began to recover.
Speaker 1: The American market was fiercely competitive at that time. Japanese
Speaker 1: automakers were really filling in the void that had been
Speaker 1: left by Volkswagen, and the Japanese companies were offering cars
Speaker 1: that aimed at customers who were looking for reliable, inexpensive vehicles.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen seventies, if you were talking about
Speaker 1: an auto import in the United States, you were probably
Speaker 1: talking about Volkswagen. But by the mid eighties that had changed.
Speaker 1: If you were talking about an import, you were probably
Speaker 1: talking about Japanese car. And Dr Han didn't seem too
Speaker 1: concerned about reversing that trend, as he was focused more
Speaker 1: on the European market at the time. Now that's not
Speaker 1: to say Volkswagen wasn't introducing new vehicles during Dr hans
Speaker 1: time as CEO. The company produced new models like the
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Santana also known as the Quantum, which evolved from
Speaker 1: the Volkswagen Pasat. Volkswagen also made a few cars for
Speaker 1: various regional markets like Brazil or Eastern Europe, and these
Speaker 1: were very much peculiar to those agents. So if you
Speaker 1: weren't from there, you were not likely to see one
Speaker 1: of these types of Volkswagen's. In Volkswagen launched an ad
Speaker 1: campaign in the United States that I still remember quite well.
Speaker 1: The company introduced a new word to Planet Earth. That
Speaker 1: new word was far fig nugan. This was technically a
Speaker 1: brand new word made up of two existing German words.
Speaker 1: You had fatherin, meaning to drive, and very NuGen, which
Speaker 1: means enjoyment. So this was supposed to be about the
Speaker 1: enjoyment of driving driving enjoyment varvig NuGen. This was not
Speaker 1: an existing German word, rather one that was invented for
Speaker 1: the ad campaign. However, I will say that the German
Speaker 1: language frequently strings together multiple words to create a new word,
Speaker 1: rather than just inventing a sensible short word to handle things.
Speaker 1: That's why you will occasionally run into German words that
Speaker 1: are incredibly long, because they've just strung together a bunch
Speaker 1: of pre existing words to describe something new. Now, despite
Speaker 1: the ad campaign, the general feeling in the US was
Speaker 1: that Volkswagen was just focused on other markets and not
Speaker 1: in North America. In Dr Han retired as CEO, and remember,
Speaker 1: the worst year for North American sales would follow in
Speaker 1: partly because Dr Hans strategy hadn't really supported the North
Speaker 1: American market. The new head of the company would be
Speaker 1: a man named Ferdinand Psh. And by the way, I know,
Speaker 1: I butchered the pronunciation of Psh in a previous episode
Speaker 1: when I talked about this family. But Ferdinand Psh had
Speaker 1: previously helmed the Audi division under Volkswagen Group, and beyond that,
Speaker 1: he traced his lineage back to the very founding of Volkswagen.
Speaker 1: His grandfather was Ferdinand Porsche himself. His father was Anton Psh,
Speaker 1: who married Ferdinand Porsche's daughter Louise headvig Annie Villehelmina Portschah.
Speaker 1: What a name. And so if you listen to my
Speaker 1: first episode in this series, you know that Anton Psh
Speaker 1: had been the director of Volkswagen during World War Two.
Speaker 1: That meant he was overseeing operations back when Volkswagen was
Speaker 1: dependent upon forced labor, and reportedly he ran off with
Speaker 1: a significant amount of money from Volkswagen while fleeing Allied forces.
Speaker 1: In he would get arrested by French authorities along with
Speaker 1: Ferdinand Porsche and spent a couple of years in jail
Speaker 1: before finally being released. Well, Ferdinand pH had previously worked
Speaker 1: at Porsche mainly in efforts to build high performance racing cars,
Speaker 1: with the primary goal of building a vehicle that could
Speaker 1: win the Laman's endurance race. This type of race is
Speaker 1: different from those that are all about the first vehicle
Speaker 1: to cross the finish line after a given number of
Speaker 1: laps or distance. Instead, the winning vehicle at Lament's is
Speaker 1: the one that has covered the most distance in a
Speaker 1: twenty four hour period, So whichever car has gone the
Speaker 1: furthest within twenty four hours across a predetermined route. Porsche
Speaker 1: had been entering versions of its Porsche nine seventeen for
Speaker 1: twenty five years before a Porsche driver took home the
Speaker 1: top prize. Ferdinand had achieved his goal of engineering a
Speaker 1: winning race car at great expense. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: such an expensive endeavor that it nearly bankrupted Porsche. In
Speaker 1: nineteen two, Ferdinand Psh would transition from Porsche to go
Speaker 1: work at Audi. Now this wasn't necessarily by choice. Pasha's
Speaker 1: obsession with creating faster racing cars had almost brought down
Speaker 1: the company, and ownership of the company fell to two families,
Speaker 1: the Porsche family and the pH family, and both of
Speaker 1: those families trace their history back to the founder Ferdinand Porsche.
Speaker 1: Both of them owned about fifty of the company Porsche,
Speaker 1: and the two sides were beginning to fight with each other,
Speaker 1: and I swear going through the stories makes it seem
Speaker 1: like it's a season of Game of Thrones. We'll learn
Speaker 1: more about that later in this episode. So in order
Speaker 1: to prevent this rivalry from tearing the company to pieces,
Speaker 1: the two families agreed that no one from either side
Speaker 1: should be involved in the day to day operations of Porsche.
Speaker 1: So that's why PSH would leave Porsche the car company Porsche,
Speaker 1: not the holding company for Audi. Ferdinand. PSH would Transformality
Speaker 1: from that brand that was being viewed as a bit
Speaker 1: old fashioned in catering to the elderly into more of
Speaker 1: a luxury sedan brand, and so it brought Audi into
Speaker 1: competition against vehicle makers like BMW or Mercedes. But PSH
Speaker 1: had grander designs. He wanted to head up Volkswagen itself.
Speaker 1: I'll have more to say about him in just a second,
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Speaker 1: All right, let's get back to the episode. Now. We're
Speaker 1: getting into an era in Volkswagen's history that was particularly
Speaker 1: complicated by family politics. This stuff gets juice. There's betrayal,
Speaker 1: there's shifty maneuvering, there's backstabbing, their extramarital affairs. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look at the Porstcha and PSH families from
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies to the two thousands and a little
Speaker 1: bit beyond, it sounds like the stuff out of a
Speaker 1: soap opera, like Dynasty or Dallas. It's crazy. On top
Speaker 1: of that, we enter into a bizarre corporate structure in
Speaker 1: which different companies gain a stake in each other, and
Speaker 1: in some cases it looks to me like the whole
Speaker 1: thing is oura borus. You know, the snake eating its
Speaker 1: own tail. And I'll do my best a little bit
Speaker 1: later in this episode to try and work out how
Speaker 1: that actually ends up being structured. For no other reason
Speaker 1: that to illustrate how the ownership of these companies is
Speaker 1: incredibly complicated and at least to me somewhat ikey. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, we've got other stuff to touch on now.
Speaker 1: While I'll have lots of critical things to say about
Speaker 1: pH one thing that's clear is that his ambition pushed
Speaker 1: Volkswagen to new heights. He was reportedly a very hard
Speaker 1: boss to work for, Like he was incredibly demanding and ruthless. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was quick to throw you aside if he didn't
Speaker 1: think you were useful. And there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other negative things I could say. But in nine the
Speaker 1: company would introduce the new Beatle and that would become
Speaker 1: available for purchase in the United States the following year,
Speaker 1: and that showed that they were now paying attention to
Speaker 1: the North American market again and no longer keeping such
Speaker 1: a laser focus just on Europe. This was a combat
Speaker 1: car that was inspired by the original Beetle, but it
Speaker 1: featured sleeker lines, front mounted inline four cylinder engine. If
Speaker 1: you listen to the first part of the series you
Speaker 1: remember that the original Volkswagen Beetle was an air cooled
Speaker 1: rear mounted engine, so it was very different from that,
Speaker 1: and Motor Trends would actually name it the import car
Speaker 1: of the Year in nineteen Despite its small size, it
Speaker 1: really wasn't the most efficient vehicle on the road. It
Speaker 1: averaged twenty one miles per gallon. You would have thought
Speaker 1: that perhaps it would have been a little better about that,
Speaker 1: but no. Well, the new Beatle, along with an updated
Speaker 1: Passat and a new Jetta model all helped revitalized Volkswagen
Speaker 1: sales in North America after that market had been largely
Speaker 1: forgotten about for more than a decade. Meanwhile, on the
Speaker 1: corporate side of things, pH was leading some pretty serious
Speaker 1: efforts to really expand Volkswagen's assets. One of the big
Speaker 1: acquisitions at this time was Bentley Motors, the company that
Speaker 1: had gone through a couple of changes in ownership, having
Speaker 1: been part of Rolls Royce for nearly forty years before
Speaker 1: a company called Vickers Plc purchased the Rolls Royce Motor
Speaker 1: division in nineteen seventy. Twenty eight years after that, PSH
Speaker 1: and Volkswagen came calling with an offer to purchase the
Speaker 1: Bentley brand. Though Volkswagen would not acquire ownership of the
Speaker 1: Rolls Royce logo or name, they did get hold of
Speaker 1: the designs. They could use the car designs, but they
Speaker 1: could not use the logo or name of Rolls Royce Bentley's.
Speaker 1: In case you don't know, our luxury cars like as
Speaker 1: luxury as luxury gets really crafts. People hand make many
Speaker 1: of the details on the vehicles like you'll get like
Speaker 1: hand carved dashboards, for example. So the manufacturing process is
Speaker 1: guided by a human touch nearly every step of the way.
Speaker 1: It is slow and methodical, and these are extremely expensive
Speaker 1: luxury cars. They're also extremely British. The cost of the
Speaker 1: acquisition was four hundred thirty million pounds. But we're not
Speaker 1: done with Volkswagen's purchases in n yet. The company also
Speaker 1: acquired the rights to use the Bugatti brand name. Now,
Speaker 1: Bugatti has its own odd past. In fact, at this
Speaker 1: point I think it must come as a prerequisite for
Speaker 1: car companies. It was founded in the early twentieth century
Speaker 1: by a Torre Bugatti, who built many successful race cars
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, but after his death in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties, the company kind of lost focus, and
Speaker 1: by the nineteen fifties it had pretty much faded from memory.
Speaker 1: It wasn't really producing cars anymore. In nineteen seven, Romano
Speaker 1: are totally an entrepreneur, acquired the rights to the Bugatti
Speaker 1: brand and built new manufacturing facilities with the the intent
Speaker 1: of making Bugatti a prestige brand again. The new Bugatti
Speaker 1: company produced several cars, but a recession in the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties took a big chunk of the company's assets and
Speaker 1: it was essentially a failed business by so three years
Speaker 1: later in nine Volkswagen acquires the brand name Bugatti and
Speaker 1: starts up production with new model designs. So today the
Speaker 1: Bugatti brand is associated with super cars that come with
Speaker 1: incredible high end price tags. And I think it's most
Speaker 1: a testament to Pasha's interest in fast cars, Like he
Speaker 1: clearly always had a fascination with building incredibly fast vehicles,
Speaker 1: and Bugatti are the type of cars that look like
Speaker 1: they're going fast even when they're sitting still. And I'm
Speaker 1: still not done with their acquisitions. One other big brand
Speaker 1: that Volkswagen acquired that year was Lamborghini. That was the
Speaker 1: Italian luxury sports car company. It's now part of Volkswagen
Speaker 1: It was founded in the nineteen sixties. Largely it was
Speaker 1: intended to be a competitor to Ferrari and developing high
Speaker 1: performance race cars. As I mentioned earlier, is really expensive.
Speaker 1: I mean it nearly bankrupted Porscha. Well for Lamborghini, that
Speaker 1: they were having the same sort of issues. They were
Speaker 1: spending way more money than they were making, and then that,
Speaker 1: paired with the oil crisis of the nineteen seventies, meant
Speaker 1: that very few orders for these high end sports cars
Speaker 1: were coming in. It led to a disastrous collapse of
Speaker 1: the Lamborghini company and the company went bankrupt and eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight. A few years later, brothers Patrick and Jean
Speaker 1: Claude Memroun revived Lamborghini and it became a brand uh
Speaker 1: a new in the nineteen eighties, um with with models
Speaker 1: like the Kuntash, which I remember as a kid, I
Speaker 1: thought was the most amazing looking car I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: But then they ended up selling Lamborghini to the Chrysler Corporation.
Speaker 1: In Chrysler would in turn sell Lamborghini off to a
Speaker 1: Malaysian company, and it was from that company the Volkswagen
Speaker 1: would acquire the rights to the Lamborghini name. And designs. Now,
Speaker 1: technically Lamborghini falls under the AUDI division at Volkswagen, and
Speaker 1: as I mentioned before, AUDI gets to operate more or
Speaker 1: less independently from Volkswagen, but it belongs to Volkswagen Groups.
Speaker 1: So Lamborghini is one of the brands under the Volkswagen
Speaker 1: Group name. All right, let's skip ahead to two thousand two.
Speaker 1: Volkswagen announced two new lines of vehicles that year. There
Speaker 1: was the Phaeton line that was a luxury car brand,
Speaker 1: and there was the Tourig line, which are SUVs. Now.
Speaker 1: This was also the year that ferinand Psh would step
Speaker 1: out of the role of CEO for Volkswagen and he
Speaker 1: became the chairman of the board for Volkswagen Group for
Speaker 1: their supervisory and steering committees. pH would continue to have
Speaker 1: significant influence within the company. His successor as CEO was
Speaker 1: an engineer named Burned Peter Pischets Reader and I'm sure
Speaker 1: of butchered that last name, so we're just gonna call
Speaker 1: him Burnt because it's a lot easier. In two thousand three,
Speaker 1: the final Type one Beatle, the original Volkswagen vehicle model
Speaker 1: that carried the company for decades, rolled off the manufacturing
Speaker 1: facility in Pueblo, Mexico, and it was actually given a number.
Speaker 1: It was number. It was car number twenty one million,
Speaker 1: five thousand, four hundred sixty four. It was not sold
Speaker 1: off to some lucky motorist. Instead, it was actually shipped
Speaker 1: back to Volkswagen's headquarters in Volksburg, Germany, because, as Indiana
Speaker 1: Jones would say, it belongs in a museum. Burnt would
Speaker 1: only stay at CEO for just a few short years
Speaker 1: before he was essentially forced to resign, and allegedly the
Speaker 1: reason that he was forced to resign was because he
Speaker 1: was frequently coming to disagreements with pH, who really wanted
Speaker 1: to keep control of this company. Martin Winterkorn, who had
Speaker 1: been the leader for the AUDI division, would then step
Speaker 1: in to take over the role as CEO. That would
Speaker 1: happen in January two seven, and winter Corn had been
Speaker 1: a pH protege though that would be put to the
Speaker 1: test in a big, big way. So at first pH thought,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, now I've got my guy in this space,
Speaker 1: even though the pH had handpicked Burnt earlier. So um,
Speaker 1: the fact that he kept getting burned by people that
Speaker 1: he picked might say more about his management style, I guess.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, Volkswagen announced plans to build
Speaker 1: an assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a billion dollar assembly plant.
Speaker 1: It would be finished by two thousand eleven. And this
Speaker 1: was the goal of producing cars for the American market,
Speaker 1: you know, within the market itself again, to augment Volkswagen's
Speaker 1: production facilities and reduce the cost of getting cars to Americans.
Speaker 1: That was also the year when we would see a
Speaker 1: game of thrones like struggle really heat up. So let
Speaker 1: me see if I can sort all of this out.
Speaker 1: This is also gonna mean sticking with this particular story
Speaker 1: and skipping some other stuff in the timeline for now,
Speaker 1: but I want to try and work my way through
Speaker 1: this whole sordid affair, alright. So this is really the
Speaker 1: story of two companies, Volkswagen Group and Porsche se which
Speaker 1: is a holding company. And it's also the story of
Speaker 1: two families, the Porsche family and the related pH family,
Speaker 1: their cousins to each other, and both of these trace
Speaker 1: their lineage to Ferdinand Porsche, the founder of both Porsche
Speaker 1: the auto company and Volkswagen the auto company. And it's
Speaker 1: also about a lot of complex corporate maneuvers that frankly,
Speaker 1: I don't fully understand, because tech is easy, but corporate
Speaker 1: structures are really hard. Okay, So the Porsche pH families
Speaker 1: own a holding company called Porsche s E. And now, typically,
Speaker 1: a holding company's purpose is to create a central point
Speaker 1: of control for multiple distinct businesses while simultaneously isolating those
Speaker 1: businesses enough so that if one should fail or falter,
Speaker 1: it doesn't drag the others down with it. So it's
Speaker 1: a way to limit liability in other words, And each
Speaker 1: business under a holding company performs as its own distinct business,
Speaker 1: though it ultimately is under the umbrella of the parent
Speaker 1: holding company. The holding company holds assets and equity, but
Speaker 1: doesn't get involved in the day to day operations of
Speaker 1: the business it holds, so you can think of it
Speaker 1: as the business owners but not the business operators. At
Speaker 1: least that's how it usually goes. So let's lay out
Speaker 1: the arrangement here. So Anton Psh and Ferdinand Porsche first
Speaker 1: founded the company that would evolve into portscha Se way
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen thirties, and this is that holding
Speaker 1: company that oversees assets. Essentially, this company holds the assets
Speaker 1: of the Porsche and Psh families. It it funnels all
Speaker 1: of the shares that all the different members of these
Speaker 1: families have and represents their ownership of Porsche um. Different
Speaker 1: members of the family, oh own different numbers of shares,
Speaker 1: so like one person in Porsche family might own twice
Speaker 1: as many shares as most of the other members of
Speaker 1: the families. So just imagine a really big family of
Speaker 1: people who don't really get along all that well with
Speaker 1: one another, and they all own some part of this
Speaker 1: holding company. Okay, so Porsche SE in turn owns the
Speaker 1: family interest in another holding company called Porsche Vision Holding.
Speaker 1: I oh, you Germans Vision Holding essentially means intermediate holding company,
Speaker 1: which I mean that tracks right like it's a holding
Speaker 1: company that's owned by a different holding company. Now, to
Speaker 1: be fair, it's a little more complicated than even that.
Speaker 1: This is starting to turn into like a Russian nesting
Speaker 1: doll situation here. But the Porsche pH families own fifty
Speaker 1: point one percent of this intermediary holding company. So you
Speaker 1: can think of Porsche SE as the organization that holds
Speaker 1: the assets that in turn represent controlling interest in another
Speaker 1: holding company. But it's this intermediary holding company that owns
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of Porsche Automobile Group that that's the
Speaker 1: actual car manufacturing company that's responsible for building and selling
Speaker 1: Porsche vehicles. So you know, Porsche se which represents the
Speaker 1: family Porsche pH interest in Porsche's Vision Holding and that
Speaker 1: in turn owns Porsche Automobile Group, got it because I
Speaker 1: don't now Porsche had as in the car company had
Speaker 1: a long history of being involved with Volkswagen's operations since
Speaker 1: the very beginning, and the holding company had a five
Speaker 1: percent stake in Volkswagen up until two thousand five, So
Speaker 1: the Porsche Holding Company also owned some ownership in Volkswagen,
Speaker 1: a small amount five percent, But in two thousand five
Speaker 1: Porsche acquired more shares in Volkswagen and increased the ownership
Speaker 1: to twenty percent. So now the Porsche Holding Company owns
Speaker 1: one fifth of Volkswagen. For a while, it looked like
Speaker 1: that was all that they could do, because is the
Speaker 1: German government had actually passed a law specifically for Volkswagen
Speaker 1: that prevented any single shareholder from acquiring more than of
Speaker 1: the ownership of the company. And this was in large
Speaker 1: part because Lower Saxony, the government region of Lower Saxony,
Speaker 1: was an owner of Volkswagen. If you listen to my
Speaker 1: first episode you remember I mentioned that that the trade
Speaker 1: unions still to this day have a powerful voice within
Speaker 1: the operations of Volkswagen, and technically Lower Saxony had a
Speaker 1: little more than ownership of Volkswagen. So by passing this law,
Speaker 1: Germany was preventing anyone else from getting more power in
Speaker 1: the company than Lower Saxony had, So this government group
Speaker 1: would have the most powerful say in the company as
Speaker 1: long as everyone else was limited to ownership or less.
Speaker 1: But then the European Union come challenged this law in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven and things started to change, and perhaps
Speaker 1: emboldened by that challenge, the Porsche Holding Company increased its
Speaker 1: steak in Volkswagen to nearly of the shares, so now
Speaker 1: it owned more of Volkswagen than Lower Saxony did. Little
Speaker 1: by little Porsche would add more shares of Volkswagen to
Speaker 1: its steak, and the process was incredibly expensive. So by
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, when Porsche held more than fifty percent
Speaker 1: ownership so it had controlling interest in Volkswagen, it became
Speaker 1: clear that it was not going to be sustainable. Porsche
Speaker 1: of the company was in debt up to its corporate eyeballs.
Speaker 1: So then in a move that I still find perplexing.
Speaker 1: Volkswagen goes and acquires forty nine point nine percent ownership
Speaker 1: in Porsche Automobile Group as in the actual automobile company.
Speaker 1: All right, now, follow me here. Porsche the holding company
Speaker 1: takes majority ownership of Volkswagen Group. Volks Wagon Group has
Speaker 1: nearly fifty percent ownership of the Porsche Car Company. Say
Speaker 1: I told you this was confusing. Now, at this point,
Speaker 1: the Volkswagen and Porsche companies were in talks of actually
Speaker 1: merging together, but that didn't happen as the EU Commission
Speaker 1: seemed ready to oppose the move and there were some
Speaker 1: legal risks, but that would all get settled by two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve because then Volkswagen would go ahead and purchase
Speaker 1: the remaining interest in the Porsche Automotive Company, not the
Speaker 1: holding company, but the actual car company. In addition, managers
Speaker 1: in Volkswagen were to become managers in Porsche s C,
Speaker 1: which would ensure that Volkswagen would remain the dominant party
Speaker 1: at the table. Now, another part of the reason why
Speaker 1: this all gets so messy is that the families involved
Speaker 1: were feuding. On the Porsche side, you had Wolfgang Porsche,
Speaker 1: who was widely regarded as the head of that family,
Speaker 1: so you can think of Wolfgang as the godfather of
Speaker 1: the Porsche's. On the pH side, you had Ferdinand pH,
Speaker 1: the former Volkswagen CEO and then the chairman of Volkswagen's
Speaker 1: Supervisory Board. The two were trying to outmaneuver each other
Speaker 1: throughout this entire process, and pH had clear contempt for
Speaker 1: his cousin. There are lots of stories about pH insulting
Speaker 1: the Porsche side of the family, with one report claiming
Speaker 1: that pH likened the Porsche's two pigs and then likened
Speaker 1: himself to a bore. And what he was saying, well,
Speaker 1: he was alluding to the fact that he Psh had
Speaker 1: grown up going to a tough boarding school, and he
Speaker 1: had put in the work to grow Volkswagen over the years.
Speaker 1: He was an engineer, he actually did the work, whereas
Speaker 1: the Porsche side, all of them went to fancy prep schools,
Speaker 1: they had no interest in engineering, and most of them
Speaker 1: were lawyers, so it was clear he didn't have a
Speaker 1: very high opinion. This would continue to boil over over
Speaker 1: the following years. I'll explain more in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break. Okay, So that
Speaker 1: whole corporate mess. I just covered kind of boils down
Speaker 1: to Volfgang Porsche and Ferdinand pH facing off against each other,
Speaker 1: with pH ultimately winning at least a little bit. And
Speaker 1: if it weren't for that darn diesel Gate scandal, this
Speaker 1: would likely be the most crazy part of the Volkswagen story.
Speaker 1: But then we do have the diesel Gate scandals. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about what that was and what it means. So
Speaker 1: back in the mid two thousand's, Volkswagen began to make
Speaker 1: a serious marketing push, designing diesel based vehicles for the
Speaker 1: United States and other markets and instead of gasoline powered vehicles.
Speaker 1: So diesel engines were invented by a guy named Diesel,
Speaker 1: and he built a combustion engine that he intended to
Speaker 1: run off of stuff like peanut oil. And in fact,
Speaker 1: you can run diesel engines off of some plant based oils.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you want to do a little bit of processing
Speaker 1: before you do that, but you can do it. Diesel
Speaker 1: engines can't run at a much higher efficiency than gasoline engines,
Speaker 1: so you can run a diesel engine for longer with
Speaker 1: a comparable amount of fuel than a gasoline engine. Now
Speaker 1: I could do a full episode to lay out the
Speaker 1: differences between diesel and gasoline engines, but really for the consumer,
Speaker 1: a big differentiating factor is just how far you can
Speaker 1: travel per given amount of fuel. Diesel cars get more
Speaker 1: miles to the gallon than gasoline based cars, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of other factors that determine whether or
Speaker 1: not it makes financial sense to go with diesel over gasoline.
Speaker 1: That includes the cost of the fuel, because if diesel
Speaker 1: is significantly more expensive the gasoline, you have to factor
Speaker 1: that in as well as the purchase price of the vehicle.
Speaker 1: Of diesel vehicles are more expensive than you may not
Speaker 1: see a financial benefit to going with diesel as opposed
Speaker 1: to gasoline, but that's neither here nor there for the scandal. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things car companies must do is they
Speaker 1: have to meet emissions standards with their vehicles in order
Speaker 1: to be able to do business within certain countries like
Speaker 1: the United States. And this is all related to environmental impact.
Speaker 1: So your cars have to perform at a certain standard,
Speaker 1: you know, beneath a threshold, or the United States government
Speaker 1: doesn't allow you to sell those cars in the US market.
Speaker 1: So back in the mid two thousand's, some engineers at
Speaker 1: Volkswagen we're trying to figure out how to make a
Speaker 1: diesel engine that would operate within the restrictions on emissions
Speaker 1: that the United States government had established. But they also
Speaker 1: were working with very tight restrictions within Volkswagen itself. So
Speaker 1: the culture within Volkswagen was success at any cost. I mean,
Speaker 1: pH had had proven that he was willing to spend
Speaker 1: tons of money to succeed at various engineering tasks, but
Speaker 1: at the same time, the restrictions were so tight on
Speaker 1: this department, they didn't have very many options. So they
Speaker 1: realized that rather than actually changing the engine, which was
Speaker 1: going to be very expensive and beyond the budget they
Speaker 1: were given and beyond their capabilities, they could instead make
Speaker 1: a few tweaks to some software algorithms to make the
Speaker 1: engines operate at or below emissions thresholds, and that would
Speaker 1: allow them to stay within budget for the development of
Speaker 1: the cars. There's only one problem. The tweaks meant that
Speaker 1: Volkswagen was going to essentially be cheating on emissions tests. Now,
Speaker 1: this didn't get discovered right away. It wasn't until two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen when some West Virginia University researchers found that
Speaker 1: two cars that they were testing a Volkswagen Jetta and
Speaker 1: a Volkswagen Pasat emitted much higher emissions levels than what
Speaker 1: they should be doing based upon emissions testing. Now. Volkswagen's
Speaker 1: official response initially anyway, was that there must have been
Speaker 1: some sort of unexpected technical issue and unusual test conditions
Speaker 1: that led to this. Engineers at Volkswagen sent a memo
Speaker 1: to CEO Martin winter Corn at the time or vinter Corn,
Speaker 1: but it's not known if vinter Corn actually saw that
Speaker 1: particular memo because it was bundled with a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of other memos at the time. Um there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who suggest that perhaps he knew about
Speaker 1: this early on, and others who say that maybe he didn't. Well,
Speaker 1: Volkswagen would issue a recall on diesel vehicles. They recalled
Speaker 1: all of them. I guess it's recall, not a recall
Speaker 1: behind the current guys. I've had two hours sleep, So anyway,
Speaker 1: the California Air Resources Board or CARB would then find
Speaker 1: some irregularities on supposedly fixed vehicles in two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1: These are vehicles that Volkswagen had supposedly recalled and then
Speaker 1: fixed and then put back into the market. But the
Speaker 1: CARB was finding that there were still these irregularities. Then
Speaker 1: the engineers at CARB we're finding that Volkswagen's explanations for
Speaker 1: why those irregularities were happening didn't seem to actually match
Speaker 1: up what they were seeing. Then the Environmental Protection Agency
Speaker 1: goes and tells Volkswagen, Hey, you know, we're not gonna
Speaker 1: let you sell any of your twenty six d SILD
Speaker 1: vehicles in the United States. And it was at that
Speaker 1: point the Volkswagen said, oh, um, are bad. Actually, we
Speaker 1: just found out there's some software regularities, and then they
Speaker 1: explained what was going on, and that leads us to
Speaker 1: the actual scandal. So essentially, when the vehicle's computer detected
Speaker 1: that it was going into emissions testing, that someone was
Speaker 1: connecting their testing equipment to the vehicle's computer, it would
Speaker 1: then engage systems that would limit emissions. They would also
Speaker 1: decrease engine performance. Now, if the cars just operated in
Speaker 1: that mode all the time, we wouldn't be talking about
Speaker 1: a scandal. But Volkswagen probably wouldn't have seen as many
Speaker 1: sales because drivers would be disappointed. They would feel like
Speaker 1: the cars were not performing very well, they were underpowered,
Speaker 1: their performance just wouldn't meet expectations. So in order to
Speaker 1: meet expectations, they needed to have the engines have a
Speaker 1: higher output of power. But if they did the higher
Speaker 1: outpuput of power, you have higher emissions. So if a
Speaker 1: Volkswagen diesel cars computer detected that it was connected to
Speaker 1: emissions testing, it would initiate this dampening system and you
Speaker 1: would have lower emissions and lower output. But then once
Speaker 1: it was detected that it was no longer connected to
Speaker 1: an emissions testing machine, it would disengage those dampening systems
Speaker 1: and the car's performance would improve significantly, but it would
Speaker 1: also emit way more pollution, including stuff like nitrogen oxide,
Speaker 1: and it would be well beyond what was the emissions threshold.
Speaker 1: So in other words, the cars were cheating on tests.
Speaker 1: When the teacher was looking, and in this case the
Speaker 1: teacher is someone performing an emissions test, then the vehicle
Speaker 1: would pull its punches and purposefully underperform, emitting fewer gases,
Speaker 1: and then once the teacher was looking somewhere else, it
Speaker 1: was party time. Well. The e p A was not
Speaker 1: amused and concluded the Volkswagen had purposefully tried to circumvent
Speaker 1: the Clean Air Act in the United States, and further
Speaker 1: that the Department of Justice would have the authority to
Speaker 1: impose a total of thirty seven thousand, five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: of civil finds per vehicle that used this kind of
Speaker 1: work around, like as in each individual vehicle. The defeat
Speaker 1: devices were in vehicles spanning model years from two thousand
Speaker 1: nine to two thousand sixteen, so if you added them
Speaker 1: all up, it would mean that Volkswagen could potentially face
Speaker 1: a maximum up to eighteen billion dollars in fines alone.
Speaker 1: Volkswagen then admitted that the same defeat system was in
Speaker 1: place in eleven million diesel cars around the world, and
Speaker 1: that Volkswagen had already set aside several billion dollars worth
Speaker 1: to fix these affected cars. Then came criminal proceedings against
Speaker 1: engineers and executives at Volkswagen, both in the United States
Speaker 1: and in Germany, as well as a scramble to figure
Speaker 1: out how to buy back vehicles that didn't meet the
Speaker 1: emission standards. So in total it would cost Volkswagen around
Speaker 1: thirty billion dollars. That is a princely sum and an
Speaker 1: enormously expensive mistake. And mistake in judgment, I should say,
Speaker 1: it's not like they accidentally did this. They the engineers
Speaker 1: that did this did this knowingly, and the costs went
Speaker 1: beyond the monetary Martin went vinder Korn, who was CEO
Speaker 1: when the scandal first broke, would end up accepting responsibility,
Speaker 1: but he also denied that he had had any personal
Speaker 1: wrongdoing involved in this. He said that he had no
Speaker 1: direct hand knowledge and he had no uh direct involvement
Speaker 1: in the decision to try and circumvent clean air laws.
Speaker 1: But he also said that as CEO, he has to
Speaker 1: be held responsible for this sort of thing happening under
Speaker 1: his watch. So he resigned his position and he was
Speaker 1: replaced by Matthias Mueller, who pledged to cooperate with investigators
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of who was responsible, while
Speaker 1: also making amends to customers who were directly affected by
Speaker 1: the scheme. Now, Mueller was previously the CEO of Porsche,
Speaker 1: which also would end up getting pulled into this diesel
Speaker 1: Gate scandal. It wasn't just Volkswagen vehicles. There are also
Speaker 1: some Porsche vehicles and Aldi vehicles that would be involved
Speaker 1: in this. So he would serve as Volkswagen CEO only
Speaker 1: until two thousand eighteen, and that was when the Board
Speaker 1: of Directors kicked him out, largely because the company as
Speaker 1: a whole had been perceived as moving too slowly to
Speaker 1: address the problems that arose due to Diesel Gate. So
Speaker 1: his replacement was Herbert die who was formerly the brand
Speaker 1: chief over at Volkswagen. So this is becoming like a
Speaker 1: revolving door situation with these quick turnarounds and CEOs. Ferdinand
Speaker 1: Psh resigned from the supervisory board of Volkswagen in April
Speaker 1: two fifteen. This would be before Martin Vinterkorn was had
Speaker 1: to resign. Then pH would sell off his shares in
Speaker 1: Volkswagen in May of two thousand fifteen, essentially divorcing himself
Speaker 1: from the company entirely. This predated Martin Vintercorne's resignation as well,
Speaker 1: So in fact Psh was attempting to have Vindercorn actually
Speaker 1: removed as CEO, and this is what led to pH
Speaker 1: to saying he was going to step away from the company.
Speaker 1: He voted to have Vindercorn removed, but he was the
Speaker 1: only member of the steering committee to do so. Uh,
Speaker 1: the others all voted against him, and Wolfgang Porsche, his rival,
Speaker 1: his cousin, was one of the parties who was, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially campaigning against pH. So pH left the company, sold
Speaker 1: off his interest, and then he threw a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of executives under the bus as he left. He implied
Speaker 1: that a lot of people in senior levels of management,
Speaker 1: including all the way up to the executive level, knew
Speaker 1: about and had approved of, the illegal technology that allowed
Speaker 1: Volkswagen's diesel engines to cheat on emissions tests. Now, whether
Speaker 1: his allegations were true or not was uncertain, But he
Speaker 1: dumped a ton of fuel on the fire, and I
Speaker 1: guess it must have been gasoline fuel, because diesel doesn't
Speaker 1: burn like gasolene does. Don't try that at home. Pish
Speaker 1: would end up passing away at age eighty two in
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen. He left behind twelve or maybe thirteen children.
Speaker 1: The numbers aren't entirely clear. There are a lot. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of actual disagreement. Um, he was married twice
Speaker 1: and he had a couple of kids outside of marriage.
Speaker 1: In fact, one a couple of them were with the
Speaker 1: estranged wife of his cousin, So he had an affair
Speaker 1: with his cousin's wife. Told you this was like game
Speaker 1: of Thrones, man, I was not kidding. So Volkswagen is
Speaker 1: still managing the consequences of diesel Gate. To this day,
Speaker 1: CEO Herbert Diese is at the center of some criminal
Speaker 1: charges that state he and other Volkswagen executives were waiting
Speaker 1: too long to inform investors of the extent and nature
Speaker 1: of the diesel Gate scandal, and that as such they
Speaker 1: were essentially committing fraud. They were telling investors that the
Speaker 1: company was in much better shape than it actually was. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Volkswagen is trying to move beyond this disaster. It has
Speaker 1: announced a plan that by t we're gonna see the
Speaker 1: company producing one and a half million electric cars, and
Speaker 1: that number actually keeps climbing, so it might be higher
Speaker 1: by the time you hear this episode in Volkswagen also
Speaker 1: produced the final Edition Volkswagen Beetle, which was an updated
Speaker 1: version of the new Beatle, and that that last one,
Speaker 1: the very last final edition Volkswagen Beetle, rolled off the
Speaker 1: production line in July two th nineteen. So now the
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Beetle is retired again. But who knows, maybe the
Speaker 1: company is going to bring it back out of retirement
Speaker 1: one more time in an effort to climb out of
Speaker 1: this massive mess. It finds itself in and that's where
Speaker 1: Volkswagen is today. As I said, I found this story
Speaker 1: to be fascinating, not just from a technological standpoint, but
Speaker 1: just from the political, social, corporate side. It's so complicated,
Speaker 1: and it's it's so so closely tied with family feuding.
Speaker 1: I had no idea about Volkswagen's involvement with the Porsche family,
Speaker 1: um largely because it's a European company, and my my
Speaker 1: vision of Volkswagen has always been the Volkswagen Beetle. That's
Speaker 1: if you say the word Volkswagen to me, I think
Speaker 1: of the old VW Beetle and this sort of quirky,
Speaker 1: iconic vehicle that's associated with like the hippies and the
Speaker 1: the Summer of Love and that kind of stuff, and
Speaker 1: and Disney movies. I don't think of a company that
Speaker 1: was founded, you know, and well or at least funded
Speaker 1: by Nazis and then run by various people who were
Speaker 1: having crazy feuds with each other in power struggles like
Speaker 1: None of that ever occurred to me, And I definitely
Speaker 1: didn't know that Volkswagen had purchased brands like Lamborghini and Bugatti,
Speaker 1: probably because those cars are just a hair outside of
Speaker 1: my price range. By a few hundred thousand dollars, but
Speaker 1: it was an interesting thing to look into. If you
Speaker 1: guys have any suggestions for future topics of tech stuff,
Speaker 1: whether it's a company, a technology, maybe it's a trend
Speaker 1: in tech you would like me to talk about, let
Speaker 1: me know. Send me a message on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle we use at both of those is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff HSW and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tex Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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