While Matthias Müller hits the halfway point of his first week as Volkswagen’s latest Chief Executive, his employers have appointed the new chairman of Porsche AG. Forty-seven year-old Doctor Oliver Blume takes the helm at Stuttgart: a move that has been applauded by many including the Chairman of the Works Council. Will putting the young production chief in charge prove the right way to go?
No doubt Blume is a capable professional, but he has only been at Porsche for two years. Graduating in mechanical engineering from Braunschweig in the early 1990s, Blume headed straight for Audi, where he progressed through the ranks to lead the bodyshell engineering team on the Audi A3 before spending time at the University of Shanghai.
Staying with Audi, Blume led development of a new Audi plant, shifting sideways to SEAT in 2004 and eventually helping to shift production of the Audi A3 to a SEAT plant in Spain, when the Spanish economy collapsed and new car sales plummeted. Success here led to promotion as Global Head of Production for Volkswagen AG in 2009, then onto the Executive Board of Porsche AG as the member responsible for production in 2013.
Porsche Production Cost Cuts?
Wolfgang Porsche renewed Blume’s contract ahead of schedule earlier this year with a five-year extension so, as Müller was always headed for Volkswagen, no doubt this Porsche job has been on the cards for a while. As a Volkswagen man through and through and a keen production cost cutter, Blume may be just what the Supervisory Board wants in charge as global operating costs are pinned to the top of the long-term agenda.
Volkswagen Emissions Scandal: $50 billion
The automotive business unit at Duisburg-Essen University recently estimated that the dieselgate scandal could cost Volkswagen up to $50 billion, so to believe that Porsche will be ringfenced from that would be foolish. As the substantial Chinese market continues to contract, Blume will be expected to deliver increasing sales and enhanced profitability, so what marketing genius will be helping the new boss to achieve this?
New Porsche Sales and Marketing Chief
Fourteen-year Porsche veteran and current head of Sales and Marketing, Bernhard Maier, has just been shot from a cannon towards the Czech Republic to take the reins at Skoda, as the former CEO there has been put in charge of a unifed Volkswagen for Canada, North America and Mexico. This means a new Porsche sales and marketing chief, so Blume will have former Porsche Cars North America boss, Detlev von Platen, to help sell whatever he produces.
Von Platen has seven years with Porsche to his name, so the two biggest jobs on the Porsche board can barely claim double figures in time with the badge between them. Cayenne is already on its way to production in Bratislava (Slovakia) alongside Audi Q7 and VW Touareg and, if Audi A3s can be made down in Spain with minimal impact on sales, where else might Porsches be bolted together? Interesting.
Had a bit of a Porsche blog sabbatical while working on other projects and building my new Porschehaus garage & office. Porsche’s Mission E concept, a new 911 with turbochargers as standard and Magnus smashing his 911 into a parked truck with a journalist on board didn’t get me excited enough to pick up a keyboard, but today’s news regarding Porsche’s parent Volkswagen kickstarted some action.
A year after this story first broke in the UK’s Sunday Times (as reported on ConsultEV), America’s Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the recall of almost half a million Volkswagen group cars sold in the US since 2008, after uncovering cheat software in Volkswagen group diesel cars designed to lower emissions when being run through emissions testing. The defeat device software knocks Nitrogen Dioxide emissions down for testing, but NO2 emissions are up to 40 times higher than levels permitted in the USA at all other times.
Toxic by inhalation, Kings College in London blamed Nitrogen Dioxide for 9,500 deaths in the city during 2010. The Nitrogen Dioxide emissions cheat software has so far been located on just five VW And Audi cars tested by the EPA, but every car found to be running the cheat software will incur a penalty of some $40k for its manufacturer. The maths apparently totals to almost $18 billion for Volkswagen in the US.
The bigger story will come from the fallout in Volkswagen’s other markets, paticularly back home in Germany. Also count on a slew of class action lawsuits against VW in the super-litigious USA. Perhaps the most bemusing aspect to this story is that emissions cheating is absolutely commonplace in vehicle testing. From my own conversations with car manufacturer-employed friends over the years, it seems that most if not all modern manufacturer ECUs are programmed with cheat software, designed to recognise throttle patterns common to rolling road emissions testing and shut down as much combustion as possible while the tests are being carried out.
A recent European Union report says that real-world emissions from cars can be up to 40% higher than seen in emissions approval testing, so this Volkswagen story is just the tip of the iceberg. You’d think the EPA would have known about this all along. I smell a rat in a Tesla lab coat, or maybe an EPA bod who stopped getting hush money. Either way, you know the discovery is no real shock to the emissions testing system: it’s a PR campaign designed to shock consumers and batter VW.
How does this affect Porsche? Well, imagine if your dad was fined $18 billion and 50,000 Americans started suing him. You would bloody know about it.
Good friend Justin just sent me this interesting slide from Australia, showing the first RHD Porsche 911 Targa being produced. Here’s the story behind it:
“I found a whole lot of my late father’s slides that I had digitally scanned a few years ago. This one is the first RHD targa going down the production line in September 1972.
“As my father told it, we were on the factory tour and the tour guide was talking about Targas. Knowing there were some English and Australians on the tour, it was mentioned that there were no RHD 911 Targas until the following year (i.e. 1973).
“You were still able to take your camera back then and Dad saw a Targa shell being rolled towards us that looked somehow different: initially, he wasn’t sure how. He took a shot of it quickly and then walked past it. On the build sheet of the car, he saw erste rechts (1st right), so we can assume it was the first production RHD Targa for the 73MY. It was mid-September 1972 my parents tell me.
“The tour guide realised and, rather than seizing Dad’s camera, asked him not to do anything with the picture until after the official embargo (which was early 1973). I assume the car was being shown somewhere – Earl’s Court , Birmingham, South Africa, Hong Kong? Dad complied with Porsche’s request, which was perfectly reasonable. I wonder where the car is now – or if indeed it still survives?
“As a side note, there are 2 73S Targas (both RHD, and both English) awaiting restorations in Sydney (where my green L was done) – one Sepia, and the other Signal Yellow. They’ll be done in about two years.”
Love getting presents from overseas and this was a really good one! Thanks, Justin 😉
Following an incredible day of absolutely flat-out racing at the historic Le Mans circuit, Porsche claimed an emphatic win in the 2015 Le Mans 24 Hours. Perhaps most incredible of all was that the winning drivers were the three LMP1 rookies: Nico Hülkenberg, Nick Tandy and New Zealand’s Earl Bamber.
Hülkenberg was the man who took the chequered flag for Porsche. As rain descended upon the Circuit de la Sarthe for the final fifteen minutes of racing, hearts were held in mouths as we waited to see if the rain would increase sufficiently to require pitstops for rain tyres.
In the end, the most extreme precipitation came only from the eyes of works drivers, Porsche Racing team personnel and Dr. Wolfgang Porsche himself, who had joined Porsche CEO, Matthias Müller, in the 919 garage. Rounding Arnage with less than a minute remaining, Porsche number 19 slowed to a crawl to prevent another lap at racing speed in the mist, crossing the line in first place after 24 hours and 24 seconds of racing.
The emotions hit home as 919 LMP1 Hybrid number 19 rolled underneath the chequered flag to claim Porsche’s 17th overall win at Le Mans: Hülkenberg breaking into tears of joy over the radio in a moment that obviously resonated deeply for the F1 driver who had stuck his reputation on the line this weekend.
“I am speechless right now to be honest,” said Hülkenberg. “To come here on my first attempt and end up on the top step: I am super super happy and also very happy for Porsche. We are incredibly proud that Porsche is back at Le Mans. We couldn’t expect to come here on our first time and win this: the car was reliable, we made no mistakes and that is what got us the top prize this weekend.”
“I couldn’t think of two guys I would rather share this car with,” said a tearful Nick Tandy in the winners’ arena. “We’ve run here not just for 24 hours but we’ve done the test here, two weeks ago we did the complete practice; we haven’t put a mark on this car, all the guys have not made a single mistake.
“We’re stood here talking to you guys (Eurosport) because we’ve just won the biggest race in the world. I could retire from racing tomorrow and I could look back on today and I’m sure I’d be happy for the rest of my life: I can keep this video for all my family forever. Many people don’t get a chance to race in this event, let alone get a chance to come here and win. I’m very, very happy.” Tandy’s expression started wobbling here and I was starting to go also. What huge emotion and what a mega drive.
Earl Bamber, Nico Hulkenberg and Nick Tandy took their victory exactly 45 years to the day after Porsche’s first win at La Sarthe. This was a 1-2 for Weissach, as Bernhard, Hartley and Webber took second place in the number 17 919. Further behind the LMP1 cars, Patrick Dempsey, Patrick Long and Marco Seefried took second place on the podium in GTE-Am: an extraordinary achievement for the team.
“It’s hard to put into words what this means,” said Pat Dempsey, also welling up before getting on the podium. “What the effort was and the support we got from everybody to make it possible to be here. The team did a great job in all the pitstops, and Patrick and Marco drove beautifully through the whole race and into the night when it was really tough.
“Patrick’s been pushing me and coaching me all year and putting me in every kind of crazy car I could get into. It makes a big difference to be here and now, to be up there (eyes podium) is definitely a dream come true. This is what we were focusing on all year.”
This is all just sinking in at the minute: no doubt more details will emerge when the drivers get a chance to tell their stories. Can’t wait to hear from our heroes but until then, well done to the entire Porsche Racing team! This is a dream come true for us all. Here’s a Porsche video from the start of the race: who would have thought that the rookies could do it?!
Twelve hours into the 2015 Le Mans 24 Hours, Porsche holds the overall lead thanks to Nico Hülkenberg, Earl Bamber and Nick Tandy. Good job too, as the Porsche team had begun to look ragged following a fire and retirement for the 92 911 RSR, retirement of the 88 911 and a stop-and-go penalty for the leading 919.
As night fell at Le Mans, Hülkenberg was first to hit the front with stunning lap after stunning lap. Tandy retook the lead after his pit stop and stuck seconds per lap on Audi’s, Andre Lotterer. The cooler temperatures of the evening seemed to suit the number 19 car, as Tandy began to set laptimes within a tenth of a second of his qualifying pace, in marked contrast to the car’s early pace.
Number 19 had started third on the grid but, as the race found its feet, the car was passed by not one but two Audis, much to the delight of the Audi team. Keeping in touch with the pack, the team eventually modified 19’s strategy to fit with a series of safety cars. At the nine-hour stage, the LMP rookies in number 19 were fourth overall.
Big Red, the number 17 919 LMP1 of Bernhard/Hartley/Webber ran out front from the start, but eventually picked up a one-minute stop/go penalty for passing under yellows. The other 919 had a rather disastrous first half of the race due to a problem with braking: Romain Dumas getting quite agitated with his engineers over team radio.
The call came for Romain to brake later in corners to heat up the front brakes after he went straight on through a run-off section at the end of the front straight. As the braking seemed to get progressively less effective, Dumas eventually flew off the track, clouting a wall at Mulsanne. The car was pushed back out on track, only to run off the track at Arnage later on, needing recovery by a hydraulic loader.
At time of writing, it is Porsche-Audi-Audi-Porsche-Audi-Porsche. Fastest race lap so far is a 3:17.647 from the number 9 Audi. Fastest Porsche time is a 3:18.674 from the Tandy 919, so one second slower than the Audi. There is still a long way to go and these cars are racing flat out, putting huge stress on the mechanicals. It’s hard to believe that the Audis can be beaten, but stranger things have happened. No doubt this is already a classic Le Mans.
The Porsche Racing team has claimed pole position in LMP1 in the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans: the first works Porsche pole position since Hans Stuck in 1988. Across the three two-hour qualifying sessions for this year’s race, all three 919 LMP1 Hybrids set blistering times that could not be matched by the competition.
Neel Jani laid the gauntlet down early, with a new record lap of the current Le Mans course in the first fifteen minutes of Q1: a 3:16.887. The Jani/Dumas/Lieb number 18 car will start from pole on Saturday, leading team mates Bernhard/Hartley/Webber in number 17.
This evening, Nick Tandy in the number 19 car set a time roughly half a second quicker than his best lap of yesterday, coming good on his promise to go faster today after some holdups in Q1, but third place was where he would finish, driving with Bamber and Hulkenberg.
Bamber was amongst those who had notes home from the stewards on exceeding track limits, but it made little difference to laptimes. All this was huge relief for Jani (below, centre with Dumas and Lieb), who confirmed to reporters at the end of qualifying that he had been expecting to fight his teammates for pole on day two.
“We thought today that we would have to go back out and defend our pole, but it was a good thing that we didn’t have to. I think it would have been a large fight at the end, but I’m happy with that lap record: we’ll take that.”
Porsche’s 1-2-3 quali times, well ahead of arch-rivals Audi, allowed the 919s to focus on race setup through the second day’s sessions. Tyre tests of day and night compounds obviously went well given Tandy’s improvements in pace, but the big question for the 24 Hours is reliability. After that comes tyres and fuel consumption.
“We have speed, but that’s not everything,” said Romain Dumas. “We are better than Audi on fuel: they are better than us on tyres.” “The Porsches are too fast,” said Audi’s Andre Lotterer. “There is no point chasing them in qualifying: we must think about racing twenty-four hours.”
No one seemed too downbeat at Audi when qualifying came to an end. The team has claimed Porsche scalps twice already this year: no reason to believe that La Sarthe cannot be the same. It’s going to be an exciting day’s racing, and that’s not including what happens behind LMP1.
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