VW Shakes Up Management: Mueller in as CEO, Horn Keeps Job [News]

Matthias Mueller
New VW CEO Matthias Mueller

In a major restructuring, Volkswagen AG announced a new CEO while reorganizing their management infrastructure.

As reported Thursday at TFLcar.com, Porsche AG chairman Matthias Mueller has been named the new CEO of Volkswagen, taking over for Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn, who resigned Wednesday amid the diesel emissions scandal that’s rocking the world’s largest automaker.

Mueller has been head of Porsche since 2010 and has served in other positions within the Volkswagen conglomerate of companies, including a few spots at Audi, where he was the head of product management for the A3 in 1993 and assumed responsibility for product management at Audi, Seat and Lamborghini in 1995, and at Volkswagen, where he became head of product management in 2007.

Along with the announcement of a new CEO, the company’s supervisory board also announced that they will be consolidating the Canadian, American and Mexican markets into a new North American region. Dr. Winfried Vahland, head of Skoda, will take over leadership of that region starting November 1. Berhnard Maier, current Porsche sales and marketing board member, will take over for Vahland as head of Skoda.

One thing that didn’t happen but was wildly predicted was the firing of VW USA boss Michael Horn. Horn will keep his job as president and CEO, but presumably will report to Vahland once he takes office.

VW also realigned some of their brands around the company’s modular vehicle platforms. Porsche will now join Bentley and Bugatti to align with the mid-engine and sports car platforms. Audi will continue to be aligned with Lamborghini and Ducati. VW proper, who will have primary control of the modular transverse platform, SEAT and Skoda will each have one member on the board.

VW will also give more independence to the brands and to newly created regions. All four regions of the Volkswagen brand will have its own management structure and a CEO that will report directly to brand chairman Herbert Diess.

Also, the group-level production department has been abolished, with those duties now delegated to the brands and regions.

No other board members or management personnel have been let go as a result of the Dieselgate scandal.

Keep up on all of TFLcar’s coverage of Dieselgate here, and check out this video of the new 2016 VW Passat, which has been overshadowed by the scandal: