Toni Schmücker

Toni Schmücker with King Hussein of Jordan , 1978

Toni Schmücker (born April 23, 1921 in Frechen ; † November 6, 1996 in Bergisch Gladbach ) was a German industrial manager . From 1975 to 1982 he was CEO of Volkswagenwerk AG in Wolfsburg.

Life

After completing secondary school, Toni Schmücker did a commercial apprenticeship at the Ford factory in Cologne-Niehl , where his father was already working. From 1942 he was a volunteer in the war, after 1945 he was again employed in purchasing at Ford in Cologne. In 1950 he became head of department there and at the age of 39 (1961) a member of the board. In order not to be forced to work at foreign locations as a manager in American companies, he moved to the board of directors of Rheinische Stahlwerke ( Rheinstahl ) in Essen on March 1, 1968 - in August of the same year he became chairman of the board. After an extensive renovation of the company in 1973 to merge with the Rhine steel competitors Thyssen led, was Schmücker at Thyssen board member and joined on 10 February 1975, succeeding Rudolf Leiding the post of CEO of Volkswagen AG.

VW was in a crisis at that time: In 1974 the loss was 807 million DM; US sales had declined by 30 percent, the factories only used 60 percent - mass layoffs of up to 25,000 VW employees were imminent. The closure or sale of the Audi / NSU plant in Neckarsulm was prevented by rigorous cost-cutting measures and staff reductions : in Neckarsulm and the VW plant in Brussels , one- shift operation was implemented . At the same time, Schmücker managed to set up a plant for the production of the Golf - called Rabbit in the USA - against the resistance of the union in the USA.

As soon as he started working in Wolfsburg, VW K 70 production was discontinued and Audi positioned as a “premium” brand. In mid-1975, at his instigation, the plans for the successor to the VW-Porsche 914, developed at Porsche on behalf of VW, were sold to Porsche. The car was later marketed as the Porsche 924 . In order to prevent the threatened closure of the Audi / NSU plant in Neckarsulm, Schmücker made it a condition that Porsche had the 924 built there on a contract with engines from VW / Audi. In the following years he also had the VW models Derby (1977), Jetta (1979) and Santana (1981) brought onto the market, thereby expanding the Volkswagen product portfolio, which until then had been largely geared towards hatchbacks, to include notchback Limousines.

Schmücker's course proved to be successful: as early as August 1975 VW was back in the black; In 1976 the group manufactured 2.1 million vehicles and made a profit of 1 billion DM. Schmücker was nicknamed "Toni the trickster" in Wolfsburg.

However, Schmücker's predecessor Rudolf Leiding had already laid the cornerstone for the successful restructuring of Volkswagen. 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.

In January 1982 Schmücker resigned from the executive board and moved to the supervisory board. His successor as CEO was Carl Hahn . In 1987 he resigned from the supervisory board.

literature

• Manfred Grieger:  Schmücker, Toni. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 264 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Toni Schmücker  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jerry Sloninger: The VW Story ; Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag, 1981; ISBN 3-87943-737-8 ; Page 252ff.
2. ↑ Jerry Sloninger: The VW Story ; Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag, 1981; ISBN 3-87943-737-8 ; Page 256