SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Indra, they were head of engine design at Audi from 1979 to 1985 under Ferdinand Piëch. How was he as a supervisor?
Indra: Piëch was a great idea-maker, he had an incredible sense of what suggestions he would like to put into effect now or not. But he was not a brilliant engineer for me, as many media like to write.
He never admitted that the Quattro idea came from Walter Treser. He was flattered when everyone wrote that he was the genius engineer. He was actually awesome in sensing trends and implementing them.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But receiving the applause for the ideas of others is extremely unfair to employees.
Indra: Whoever had the idea in the end does not really care. Because if the coworker does not have a boss who can sell his ideas, then the best idea uses nothing. And that was exactly what Ferdinand Piëch could do. He used all methods to enforce projects that he was sure would work. And then pulled one board after another on his side.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why did he bring you to Audi from Alpina, a small manufacturer?
Indra: There were problems with the development of the Audi 100. Its engine was placed far ahead, so a bigger engine delivering more power was not an option. So a turbocharger had to come here. At that time I developed very successfully turbocharged engines at Alpina, and that's why Piëch hired me.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: In what kind of company did he get you then?
Indra: When he took over Audi, they were absolutely broke, there was nothing. He took me by night and fog over the test stands and through the offices, which were still from the Middle Ages. Audi was broken. And he wanted to make a premium manufacturer out of this manufacturer of suspenders cars driven by teachers.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How did Ferdinand Piëch Audi miss this new image?
Indra: Back then we often drove together from Ingolstadt to the factory in Neckarsulm, and Piëch always drove incredibly fast. I asked why he did that. "You know," he said then, "in every BMW and Mercedes that we pass now, sits a future Audi buyer." This answer was typical of him, and he really made it. If you look at the highways today, the Audis are the fastest.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Piëch always had such simple answers ready?
Indra: Piëch was complicated and explained everything in a complicated way. The art of engineering is to make things as easy as possible. But if you explain something to a person easily and he understands it immediately, then you're just a normal engineer. On the other hand, one who radiates this aura of ideas that one does not understand must be something special.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What does such a complicated boss value in everyday life?
Indra: Quality has always been enormously important to him. And he did not give anything to himself, he lived an incredible zeal. We used to drive with him in the desert, he went as fast as possible, sometimes with 200 km / h, everybody was after, it was terrible. That you have to go through summer and winter tests, no matter how cold or hot it is - for many it was a role model: if the boss does that, you have to join.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: After six years, Audi was over for you. Why did you have to go?
Indra: Piëch was prevented at the presentation of the Audi 80 Coupé, so I took that over then. After that, the then chief executive Wolfgang Habbel many, both internally and externally, said that I do that much better than Piëch. But that was no art, Ferdinand Piëch has always been difficult with such speeches. That's why Habbel wanted me to hold these presentations in the future - Piëch probably did.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Officially, you say, you had to leave Audi for breaches of secrecy. How did you continue to work?
Indra: I was released first and then switched to Opel and later to General Motors in the US. Both companies had a much more relaxed atmosphere, they talked and discussed with each other, there was no total order from above. That was real teamwork, in which everyone gave everything for the group, that did not exist at Audi.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Was Piëch just too hard?
Indra: Of course he was tough, but on the whole he was an incredible manager. For more than six or seven years, however, they did not hold their own under him, so you had to have a special mentality and be completely submissive to him, like Martin Winterkorn. The VW employees, however, Ferdinand Piëch has given much and first Audi, later saved the entire group from bankruptcy and even brought to bloom.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So Germany without Ferdinand Piëch would not be the car country that it is today?
Indra: No, without him Volkswagen would not be where it is today, but Germany as a car country already. People like him, you can see that in politics too, do not build a successor and want to conclude by saying that they can not do without them. And it was clear that it would not work without him. But that only applies to Volkswagen.
