VW to finalise Porsche takover for ?3.9billion

More watering down of luxury/sport brands.

Imo in paper, Porsche may be given independent status within the VW group but how much independence could the storied car marque get? I could be wrong. But given recent developments such as VW reshuffling some of Porsche's senior management, making Stuttgart's R&D a center of sports car development within the VW empire and family disputes between Audi, Porsche and VW over a future 356-styled roadster. Talking about family matters, it is simple as a family member getting warranted attention when his/her other siblings harbored jealousy and envy. So truthfully-speaking will there be any independence? Probably but freedom will come at an expense of who will give way of right. That is difficult.

Just to hear the words "Porsche takeover" sounds sad. Still I am sure the cars will lose nothing from their exceptional drivability and reliability. Unfortunately they will also retain their "poor" aesthetics.

It's no big deal, Volkswagen parents the Veyron..

I don't belive this :Porsche will stay independent from the parent company" Not a single word.And i'm not pleased . Touareg VS Cayenne ??? Independet uh ?

There's no doubt Porsche is a successful brand, due to a successful product. However the decision to try to take over VW a few years back was really stupid. I might get thumbs dow for this and I don't really care, but Porsche asked for this by trying to buy VW. Then VW came in and saved them from certain bankrupcy. Those that followed this back then know what I'm typing about. Overall, VW has made pretty good choices, both in business and product build. I think Porsche wil be ok.

I love how people say that Porsche failed at the takeover...I mean do you guys seriously think Porsche wanted to buy or could buy VW group?? It was a successful attempt at inflating the VW stock to double and Porsche stocks deflating after, the two had to merge no matter what and VW would of been the big dog, so they raised the value of VW and got Porsche a publicly traded company for pennies. They had to merge for porsche to survive and to be able to keep making sports cars for the US market otherwise they would of been making some gay little cars to meet the MPG fleet quota. The families may argue about what type of car they should produce, they have always built different cars but at the end of the day they have the same business values and each runs a very successful business, no reason for VW to mingle with Porsche's affairs or vice versa. There is no animosity between these families, they just had different visions at the start, one wanted to build a car for the people the other wanted to build a premium sports car. VW owns Bugatti, Bentley, and Lamborghini and have had nothing but open arms for them, they gave them whatever $ they needed and resources and opened the doors to their parts bins if they needed something. And those were almost bankrupt companies and look at them now, they weren't family either. I think Porsche which is family and has always been hand in hand with VW and is a VERY successful and profitable company will be OK. VW has no reason to mingle with their business, they are the most profitable car company in the world, making over 20% profit. They can't financially afford to mess it up, also a whole province in germany gets their bread and butter from Porsche, they can't afford that kind of negative publicity especially in their mother land.

Also if you look back this has been planned for a while. They bought Bentley for their interior craftsmanship and design heritage, with Bugatti they have been going for aerodynamic testing and innovations and high speed stability having one of the most advanced wind tunnels in the world. Lamborghini has been heavily focusing on composite materials. Porsche has been mainly innovating for the past few years in suspensions and transmissions. Audi has always been focused on aluminum fabrication, and the mainstream test bed for technology that has trickled down from the sports car labs(bugatti, lambo, porsche). They are very well structured and are probably the only car company that has modular R&D laboratories that are also very profitable. They see almost relatively instant ROI from their R&D investments, that's why they can afford billions and billions in R&D and expansions. Where as most companies have one R&D lab that comes up with technologies and they have to wait for the right model to be released, they don't innovate for immediate use with a test vehicle that will hit the market any time soon, plus they dont have test beds in EVERY category. Like that clear screen rear window GM came up with, they have NO vehicle in a category where something like that could be used and be a reasonably priced option any time soon. VW could put that in a Bentley and be able to charge 20,000$, i mean what's another 20k on a 300k car, but 20k ontop of a 25k malibu or 70$ Cadillac is ridiculous, so they have to wait for the technology to drop drastically in price before they can use it. Think of all the technologies that are too expensive to start out in a mainstream car. This is where VW shines, they don't need to wait for anything to test it out and make $ off their new creations.

@radmeister. couldnt have made it any clearer. i am really surprised that u havent been shot down.....yet.....by the "competition" fanboys. thumbs up from me.