New Team Is Named to Head Volkswagen

The board of Volkswagen AG, Europe’s biggest car maker, named a new chairman and deputy chairman Friday whose main task will be to slash costs and boost profits to meet tough Japanese competition.

Austrian-born Ferdinand Piech, head of Volkswagen’s Audi subsidiary, will succeed Chairman Carl Hahn, 65, beginning in 1993, and French-born Daniel Goeudevert, a board member, was named Piech’s deputy.

The board’s decision was a formality after its executive committee recommended the appointments two weeks ago.

Analysts welcomed the staff changes, saying a major overhaul of the German giant was long overdue.

But many were skeptical the two men could bridge the differences in their philosophies and personalities and steer a more efficient and profitable VW into the 21st Century.

“The Piech-Goeudevert team puts a duo fatale at the helm--a technology freak who dreams of a 1,000-horsepower car and a manager who wants to build an environmentally friendly car,” Der Spiegel magazine wrote this week.

“The result is clear--the two men will be fighting over turf,” it said.

Piech, 54, loves fast cars and has a reputation as a brilliant engineer. But he is also described as a bristly, querulous manager with an oversized ego.

Goeudevert is seen as a charming team player who uses television talk shows to promote his progressive ideas on the need for car makers to pay greater attention to ecological concerns.