There recently left these shores a benign and fecund angel of the automotive realm, Dr Franz Josef Paefgen, retiring chairman and CEO of Bentley. Benign because he was unfailingly polite and helpful and understood the Bentley tradition and the sort of people who buy into it. Indeed, he empathised with a wider tradition than that: he must have been the only Bentley (or any other?) CEO who would sometimes drive to work in his Morris Minor.
Fecund because, despite his appreciation of tradition, he was thoroughly modern in his approach to engineering and product development. It would be an exaggeration to say that without Dr P, as he was known, there wouldn’t be a Bentley today; but it mightn’t have been the success it has, for all VW’s half-billion investment.
Like nearly all good CEOs, Dr P was always a company man. He joined Audi in 1987 after engineering engines for Ford, by 1995 was head of engineering, by 1997 CEO. There he worked under Ferdinand Piëch, head of the VW Group, whom he describes as ‘the most brilliant engineer I’ve met’. Piëch was also a demanding boss: if you were in a group meeting and couldn’t answer his question he’d say, ‘Get on your mobile now. We’ll wait.’ And they’d all sit in silence.
The challenge at Audi was to decide whether it should be Opel/Ford or BMW/Mercedes. Rightly, Dr P went for the latter. When he proudly announced that Audi quality at last matched the Mercedes E Class, Piëch merely nodded and said, ‘S Class is your objective.’ After Dr P had served five years as CEO Piëch offered him Bentley. He nearly left the group at that point but Piëch urged him to stay and do it.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in