NOVEMBER 21, 2001

Friday is a big day at Volkswagen

NO-ONE knows what will be discussed at the meeting of the Volkswagen supervisory board on Friday but what has been revealed is that this will decide on whether to accept the chairman designate Bernd Pischetsrieder's proposals for the revamping of the company's automobile brands. More importantly, however, it will vote on what investments are to be made in the course of the next five years. If the company is going to get involved in F1 such a program would, most likely, be decided at this meeting.

What is clear is that Pischetsrieder is planning to divide the company into two strategic groups: those offering traditional products and those with as sportier identity. Pischetsrieder has already said that he intends Audi, Seat and Lamborghini to be included in the new sporty division leaving VW, Skoda and Bugatti to trade to a more conservative market.

This policy would seem to suggest that a Formula 1 program is the way forward for one of the sporting brands and logic says that as Audi is in competition with the big F1 players (notably Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Jaguar) this would be the brand to use.