VW and tough lessons learned

Time was (and I remember it well), you could phone up Volkswagen’s R&D director and ask him for help with an obscure technical point. Admittedly Prof Ulrich Seiffert was an exceptional man in exceptional times – and you didn’t abuse the privilege. But it really did happen. On a similar vein, Carl Hahn, VW chairman between 1982 and 1993, wasn’t above sitting opposite you at supper, speaking movingly of his parents and relatives still in East Germany and giving his heartfelt commitment to doing whatever he could for German reunification.

Back then, if you asked VW management a straight question, you’d get a straight answer: communication was both open and open-hearted. These days, VW, damaged by Dieselgate and the trust issues arising therefrom, and facing a cash crunch as fines are levied and an ambitious-but-risky electric strategy is pursued, seems more insular, less open to scrutiny and less willing to engage in debate.

So ‘answers’ are written before an ‘event’ by VW’s communications officers, then journalists’ questions are bowdlerised into obsequious opportunities to broadcast the correct message.