In two days, Oliver Blume will take over the management of Volkswagen.

That's quite a task.

And it is of a special dimension because the circumstances could hardly be worse.

War in Ukraine, fearful views of China, escalating inflation, concerns about a recession in Europe, unrelenting energy and commodity prices, unstable supply chains, a lack of chips, strangling regulations - and a great deal of uncertainty in our own ranks.

During the years of his predecessor Herbert Diess, who has now been dismissed, the group committed itself to electromobility in a feat of strength, but forgot other things.

Building good Volkswagens, for example.

Holger Apple

Editor in business, responsible for “Technology and Engine”.

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Volkswagen, that's 670,000 employees, more than 100 factories around the world, 10 vehicle brands, 250 billion euros in sales, 9 to 10 million new cars a year.

It's a never-ending competition with Japanese giant Toyota to build more cars.

But that's not the point now.

It's about the future of Volkswagen, about forming a team out of a torn team with a penchant for intrigues and developing thrilling cars again.

Ferdinand Piech and Martin Winterkorn are still hovering over Wolfsburg.

They ruled egocentrically in a management system shaped by fear and dependency, their era ended ignominiously in diesel fraud.

But the cars were ahead of the competition.

Gap size or Excel spreadsheet

“Winterkorn walked around the new cars with a horde of production people during the board presentation.

Then it was reworked.

This ran around the cars with a host of Excel spreadsheets.

Then savings were made,” says one of the management team, describing the situation.

The result is visible on the road on an ID 3, the material and workmanship of which do not meet the requirements of a VW.

Next year, an extensive facelift should raise the electric Golf counterpart to a decent level.

It's hardly any better than that, although sales emphasizes that there are more orders for the ID 4 than can be produced.

There is disagreement behind the scenes.

“Why does Hyundai have an Ioniq 5 and we have an ID 4?” is asked rhetorically, referring to the Korean statement.

Volkswagen is about to risk its traditional leadership role.

Anyone who knows the models planned for the next two or three years will be sobered.

The new Tiguan is fine so far, as will the Passat Variant, which will be manufactured by Skoda in the future, but then it will be thin.

The newly appointed brand boss Thomas Schäfer is said to have thrown his hands over his head when he saw the future model range of the Volkswagen brand for the first time.

You don't have to be a prophet to predict that a lot of work will be done here again.

Design, appearance, finish, "everything designed too sparingly," states one of the management circle.

The desire for passionate cars germinates in the team, essentially for the timelessly good Golf IV. Soft paint, gaps, blue instrument lighting, those were exclamation points.

"Or why don't we, as heartbreakers, build an electric convertible?" Today (until today?), rational priorities obviously apply.

The buyers at Volkswagen only asked for the lowest price, the quality that suffered as a result no longer played a decisive role, a supplier complained.

"They save the brand broken".