Rudolf Leiding

Rudolf Leiding (born September 4, 1914 in Busch in the Altmark ; † September 3, 2003 in Baunatal ) was CEO of Volkswagenwerk AG from 1971 to 1975 .

The trained motor mechanic began his career in 1945 as a motor vehicle expert at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg , where he was responsible for repairs to army vehicles. From 1958 to 1965 Leiding was plant manager at the Volkswagen factory in Kassel . He then became CEO of Auto Union GmbH in Ingolstadt , where he had the successful Audi 100 developed. In 1968 he left Auto Union to take over the chairmanship of Volkswagen do Brasil . In Brazil, Leiding had the VW SP2 developed, among other things , and increased production by 50 percent within three years.

On April 1, 1971, Leiding took over from Gerd Stieler von Heydekampf as CEO of Audi NSU Auto Union AG . Only six months later, on October 1, 1971, he took over the chairmanship of VW in Wolfsburg from Kurt Lotz . Less than three weeks in office, he stopped the Beetle successor EA 266 , which was about to go into series production, due to high production costs - a mid-engine car designed by Ferdinand Piëch at Porsche . More than three years of development work thus proved unnecessary, and Leiding pushed through the development of new models. Under Leiding's leadership, unsuccessful models such as the VW Type 4 and the VW 1600 were sold and the model range with the VW models Passat (1973), Scirocco (spring 1974), Golf (autumn 1974), Polo (1975) and the two Audi Audi 80 (1972) and Audi 50 (1974) models removed. The success of this show of strength - the development of six new models within a few years - only became apparent in the years that followed after Leiding's departure.

At the turn of 1974/75 the losses at VW reached 807 million DM, partly due to the development costs of the new models, on the other hand the first oil crisis caused reluctance to buy. Nevertheless, Leiding planned to build a factory in the USA, which met resistance from the employee representatives at VW. Leiding left the company at the beginning of 1975 - Toni Schmücker was his successor .

Rudolf Leiding was an honorary citizen of São Paulo and was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit . In 1976 he was awarded an honorary doctorate (Dr.-Ing. E. h.) From the TU Berlin . The access road to the VW plant in Baunatal near Kassel was renamed to Dr.-Rudolf-Leiding-Platz in 2002 .

literature

Knut Simon, Stuart Mentiply: Beetle profiles, celebrities meet an old friend ; Braunschweig: Appelhans, 2003; ISBN 3-930292-70-X
Jerry Sloninger: The VW Story ; Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag, 1981; ISBN 3-87943-737-8
Rudolf Leiding , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 49/2003 of November 24, 2003, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Leiding, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German manager
DATE OF BIRTH	September 4, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH	Busch , Altmark
DATE OF DEATH	September 3, 2003
Place of death	Baunatal