Toni the trickster

We’ve covered previous Volkswagen bosses in this series, but Toni Schmücker is the Wolfsburg CEO that many enthusiasts might want to forget. As the fourth head of the company – following Heinrich Nordhoff, Kurt Lotz and Rudolf Leiding – it was during his watch that the Beetle manufacture ended in Europe. But he also signed off on the air-cooled T25 Transporter, which many had expected would emerge as front-engined and water-cooled, thus giving VW’s traditional engine technology a surprise lease of life. And, when others might have closed the troubled Mexican and Brazilian plants, he tried to strengthen their stability instead, allowing them to continue building air-cooled machines for decades to come. With Schmücker, it’s swings and roundabouts. Yes, technically, he’s the boss who killed the Beetle. But he also allowed it to live on elsewhere.

King negotiator

“Schmücker was just in the right place at the right time, but in a less competent pair of hands, it could have all gone very, very wrong”

Schmücker didn’t work his way up through