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Volkswagen
大眾汽車
VW conquers the world
大眾征服世界
Germany’s biggest carmaker is leaving rivals in the dust
德國最大汽車制造商令對手望塵莫及
When Ferdinand Piech arrived as Volkswagen’s chief executive in 1993, things looked dire. The carmaker was overspending, overmanned and inefficient, and had lost its reputation for quality. How things have changed: last year the VW group’s profits more than doubled, to a record 18.9 billion ($23.8 billion). As other European volume carmakers seek to close factories and cut jobs, VW is seizing market share in Europe, booming in China and staging a comeback in America. It plans to spend 76 billion on new models and new factories by 2016. Its global workforce is more than half a million, and growing.
1993年，當費迪南德·皮耶希出任大眾所首席執行官時，這家汽車制造公司的處境十分糟糕——公司不僅經費超資、人員冗雜、效率低下，還丟掉了產品質優的牌子。如今時過境遷，大眾集團去年利潤翻了一番有余，以189億歐元（238億美元）創歷史新高。正當歐洲其他年產汽車制造商試圖關廠裁員時，大眾集團卻在歐洲搶占市場份額，在中國迅速蓬勃發展，在美國卷土重來。大眾計劃在2016年投入760億歐元用于新車型的研發以及增設新工廠，公司現有全球勞動力逾50萬，這一數字還在持續增長。
It took years for Mr Piech—now chairman, but still with his hands firmly on the wheel—to tame VW’s menagerie of semi-independent brands and get to grips with its global empire of factories. He has been a ruthless hirer and firer of executives: only last month Karl-Thomas Neumann was removed as head of VW’s Chinese operations, supposedly for his disappointing performance, despite the juicy profits VW is making in China. Mr Neumann had been talked of as a possible successor to the chief executive, Martin Winterkorn.
皮耶希先生現在雖已退居集團主席一職，卻依然緊握大全，他在馴服大眾旗下一系列半獨立品牌，把握全球工廠帝國上耗費數年。他一直是冷酷無情雇主，也是執行官“殺手”——僅在上月，大眾中國CEO倪凱明突遭撤換，盡管大眾在中國的利潤不菲，據猜測倪凱明是因其在華表現不佳而黯然離場。倪凱明先生曾被認作是繼任首席執行官馬丁·文德恩的熱門人選。
Mr Piech is a grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, who founded VW after Hitler called in 1934 for the creation of a cheap “people’s car”, a Volkswagen. The Piech-Porsche clan controls both VW and Porsche, a sports-car maker that is now being folded into VW after the failure of an overambitious and highly leveraged reverse takeover. On July 4th VW agreed to buy the 50.1% of Porsche it does not yet own for 4.46 billion.
皮耶希先生是費迪南德·保時捷的孫子。老費迪南德響應希特勒設計一款價格低廉，屬于“人民大眾的轎車”的號召，在1934年創立了大眾公司。如今，皮耶希-保時捷家族同時打理大眾和保時捷兩個品牌。保時捷是跑車制造商，在一次雄心過大且高杠桿的反向收購失敗后，被整合至大眾麾下。今年7月4日，大眾同意以44.6億歐元的價格吞下保時捷余下的50.1%的股份。
VW is also buying Ducati, a maker of fancy motorbikes, and consolidating MAN and Scania, two lorrymakers, into its commercial-vehicles division. Yet still the firm remains hungry. It has long coveted Alfa Romeo, a premium-car division of Fiat; and is rumoured to be eyeing up Navistar, an American lorrymaker. Mr Winterkorn nevertheless dismisses the suggestion that the group is getting unmanageably big.
大眾公司還買下頂級摩托制造商杜卡迪，并將曼恩和斯堪尼亞這兩家卡車制造商合并至旗下的商務車系。然而，大眾依舊野心勃勃。它對菲亞特旗下的高檔車品牌阿爾法·羅密歐覬覦已久，有謠傳稱大眾還盯上了美國卡車制造商納威司達。有人提議稱大眾集團正日趨壯大而變得難以管理，可是文德恩卻對此不予理睬。
Mr Piech’s plan was for VW to become the world’s biggest carmaker by volume by 2018. Last year, however, as Toyota struggled with the aftermath of Japan’s tsunami and GM floundered in Europe, VW reached its goal seven years early (see chart), if you do not count Subaru, Toyota’s distant affiliate, or GM’s Wuling joint venture in China, which mainly makes Chinese-branded cars.
皮耶希先生的計劃是希望大眾能在2018年坐上全球汽車銷量頭把交椅。可在去年，豐田公司在日本海嘯余波中苦苦掙扎，美國通用在歐洲步履艱辛，如果不將豐田的遠房分支斯巴魯，或是通用在華合資企業，主要以生產中國品牌汽車的五菱公司計算在內，大眾公司已提前7年實現目標（見上圖）。
The 8.5m vehicles VW made last year cover all corners: Volkswagen, Skoda and SEAT in the mass market; Audi in premium cars; Porsche, Bugatti and Lamborghini in sports cars; Bentley at the luxury end; plus various commercial-vehicle brands. Most (SEAT excepted) are firing on all cylinders. IHS Automotive, a forecaster, expects VW easily to beat its target of 11m sales by 2018.
大眾公司去年生產的850萬輛汽車覆蓋了所有市場類型——大眾市場內有大眾、斯柯達以及西亞特；高檔車市場有奧迪；跑車領域有保時捷、布加迪和蘭博基尼；高端豪車里有賓利，外加諸多商務車品牌。除西亞特外，其余品牌銷量大都一路領先。預測機構思邁汽車信息咨詢公司稱，大眾公司有望在2018年輕松突破年1100萬輛車的銷售目標。
Fierce competition and regulatory pressure to develop alternative-fuel cars are forcing other makers to seek cost-sharing partnerships. Toyota and BMW are teaming up on low-carbon technologies. GM’s Opel division in Europe is joining Peugeot-Citroen to make smaller cars. Daimler is edging towards a threesome with the Renault-Nissan alliance. Sergio Marchionne, the boss of Fiat and Chrysler, recently suggested merging several European makers to create “another Volkswagen”.
在代用燃料型汽車的研發上，其他汽車制造商面臨著激烈的競爭，以及來自監管部門的壓力，使制造商們不得不尋求能分攤成本的合作伙伴。豐田和寶馬就正在低碳技術上進行合作。美國通用歐洲子公司歐寶攜手標致雪鐵龍一同制造小型轎車。戴姆勒則傾向于加入雷諾-尼桑聯盟，玩三人行。菲亞特和克萊斯勒總裁塞爾吉奧·馬爾基翁近期提議，將幾家歐洲汽車制造商合并，組建起“另一個大眾”。
Volkswagen has been better than its rivals at reducing the number of common “platforms” that its cars are built on. This allows it to offer a fabulous variety of brands and styles while slashing manufacturing costs. The next stage, launched this year, is a versatile platform codenamed MQB, which will underpin the VW Golf, Audi A3, Skoda Octavia and SEAT Leon, in all their variations.
在減少組裝汽車的通用“平臺”數量上，大眾公司一直比競爭對手做的出色。而這方面的優勢也讓大眾能在大刀闊斧削減制造成本的同時，極大程度的豐富旗下的品牌和車型。今年新發行的代碼為MQB的多功能組裝平臺，將支持大眾高爾夫系列，奧迪A3，斯柯達明銳系列，西亞特Leon以及上述系列衍生車型的組裝。
Wolfsburg’s lone wolf
狼堡的獨狼
VW’s size means it seldom needs partnerships with rivals, says Mr Winterkorn. Perhaps this is just as well. Judging by its botched hook-up with Suzuki, a mid-sized Japanese maker, VW is not much good at romance. Suzuki’s boss, Osamu Suzuki, has filed for divorce and is taking VW to arbitration to force it to sell its 19.9% stake in Suzuki. Among other things, he has complained of being treated like a subsidiary, rather than a partner. VW had hoped to develop cheap cars for emerging markets with Suzuki, which is big in India. Now it must do so alone, at considerable cost.
文德恩先生說，大眾的規模決定了它幾乎不需要同對手合作。事實或也誠然如此。從大眾與日本中型汽車制造商鈴木失敗的聯姻來看，大眾實屬不懂浪漫之輩。鈴木總裁鈴木修已向仲裁法院遞交了“離婚”申請，希望通過仲裁以迫使大眾返回其持有鈴木的19.9%的股份。此外，鈴木修還抱怨稱，鈴木更像是大眾的子公司，而非合作伙伴。鈴木在印度占有大量市場份額，大眾曾期望能攜手鈴木，共同為新興市場生產廉價車。如今，大眾不得不以高昂的成本獨自完成了。
In many of the 26 countries where VW has factories, it has been around long enough to be seen as a domestic firm, so protectionists usually leave it alone. The founding family’s controlling shareholding, and a blocking stake held by the state of Lower Saxony, where VW is headquartered, allow it to resist short-term pressures to pull out of any market that turns difficult. Rivals envy the stability this brings, especially just now, says Mr Winterkorn.
在大眾設廠的26個國家中，被看做國企，故不受保護主義分子的騷擾。大眾公司的股權受創始家族掌控，而攔截性股權又由總部所在的下薩克森州州政府持有，這便使公司在市場轉難的時候可以抵御短期壓力，及時抽身。文德恩先生說，大眾的對手們都羨慕這種關系所帶來的穩定，尤其是現在。
VW can cope with a collapse of the European car market. Others must make deep cuts—or perhaps even, in the case of GM (which has lost $16 billion in Europe since 1999) and Ford (which gave warning on June 28th of deepening losses there), pull out of the continent altogether.
如果歐洲汽車市場崩潰，大眾可輕松應付。其他汽車制造商則不得不大幅削減，甚至退出歐洲大陸市場，例如自1999年至今損失160億美元的美國通用公司，以及在6月28日對歐洲損失預警的福特公司。
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