Gottfried Schultz
| Gottfried Schultz
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|---|---|
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| legal form | SE |
| founding | 1924 |
| Seat | Ratingen , Germany |
| management | Nicholas J. Dunning (Chairman of the Management Board) Heinrich Weiss (Chairman of the Supervisory Board) |
| Number of employees | 2062 |
| sales | 1.723 billion euros (as of 2017) |
| Branch | Car dealership |
| Website | gottfried-schultz.de |
The car trading group Gottfried Schultz Automobilhandels SE , based in Ratingen, is the largest independent authorized dealer for the brands of the Volkswagen group in Germany. The company employs around 2,000 people in 28 companies. It sells and looks after cars from the Volkswagen, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles , Audi , Seat , Škoda , Bentley , Porsche and Bugatti brands .
history
Gottfried Schultz (1903–1980) founded a company in Essen in 1924 that sold Nash brand cars and dealt in used cars. In the early 1930s he became a Horch dealer . After Horch merged with Audi, Wanderer and DKW to form Auto Union , he also ran these brands from 1932. In 1936 a new building was built, in which the company's main operations were located until 2009. In 1939 a “main workshop contract” was signed with Volkswagenwerk GmbH Berlin.
After the end of the Second World War , the company was faced with the problem that its most important trading partners were in the Soviet zone of occupation . Schultz began a collaboration with the Wolfsburg Volkswagen plant, for which he initially brokered former Wehrmacht stocks. In 1946 he signed a contract with the factory for the delivery of the VW Beetle to private individuals. In 1949 he founded his first branch in Düsseldorf , which was followed by sales offices in Opladen and Moers in 1952 and a branch in Mettmann in 1958 . In 1968 a new building was built in Ratingen-Lintorf , in which a wholesale distribution center and company headquarters were set up.
Company founder Gottfried Schultz died in 1980 at the age of 77.
After sales and service of the Volkswagen and Audi brands had been under one roof for over 20 years - the abbreviation for it was called "VAG" at the time - the manufacturers' strategy changed in the late 1980s / early 1990s. In the meantime, the model ranges from Volkswagen and Audi had become so extensive that - if you wanted to give interested parties a complete overview - they could hardly be presented side by side. Consequently, Volkswagen and Audi (like Porsche before), but also the brands Seat (with Gottfried Schultz since 1993), Škoda (since 2003) and Bentley (since 2002), which are now part of the Volkswagen Group, decided to switch to " Centers ”or at least focus on one brand's operations. In 1989, Gottfried Schultz built the first Audi center in Germany in Essen. Businesses specialized in Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, Škoda, Bentley or Porsche followed through new construction, expansion and takeover. The “Automeile Höherweg” for more than 20 automobile brands on an area of around 15 hectares has been in existence in Düsseldorf since 2004 under the leadership of Gottfried Schultz. Gottfried Schultz is represented on the “Automeile Höherweg” with the Volkswagen Center Düsseldorf, the Škoda Centrum Düsseldorf, a SEAT company and the luxury brands Bentley and Bugatti.
Gottfried Schultz trains around 400 young people to become automotive clerks, office clerks, car mechatronics engineers (car mechanics or car electricians), body builders, painters and warehouse logistics specialists.
The 2019 board consists of Nicholas J. Dunning (Chairman), Harald Fähr, Klaus Hungerland and Jan Laubrunn. The supervisory board includes Heinrich Weiss (chairman), Alexander Glasmacher, Felix Goedhart, Peter J. Henssen, Martin Kirschner and Valerie Rademacher.