Perhaps it really did run in the family. In the mid-1960s, there was the then VW boss Heinrich Nordhoff, who was desperate to find a successor to the Karmann-Ghia models based on the Beetle, and Ferry Porsche, who had to replace the 356 and was not very happy with the sales figures of the 912. Nordhoff’s daughter, Elisabeth, was married to Ferry’s nephew, Ernst Piëch – so it is easy to imagine that the two high-ranking gentlemen also knew each other privately. And so Nordhoff and Porsche agreed that Porsche would participate in the development of the sporty VW model – and that both manufacturers would market the vehicle under their own names. “Win-win”, you might think. But then Heinrich Nordhoff died on 12 April 1968, shortly after the first prototype of the 914 had been presented (on 1 March 1968). Nordhoff’s successor, Kurt Lotz, who had no connection whatsoever with the Porsche and Piëch families, is said not to have recognised the “handshake”, but was of the opinion that Porsche should at least contribute to the tooling costs. But this was too expensive for the Stuttgart-based company. As a compromise, “VW-Porsche Vertriebs GmbH” was founded at the beginning of 1969, which soon moved from the Porsche premises in Stuttgart, where all development work had taken place, to Ludwigsburg.
Talk about it