2005 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe 2-door 3.6l Cpo on 2040-cars

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VW Group to split brands under four holding companies

The Volkswagen Group is planning a tremendous shift in its internal structure that will decentralize operations by splitting its 12 brands into four different holding companies. Here's the breakdown. Things will be split logically, considering the inter-sharing of parts, platforms, and engines. The Volkswagen brand, Seat, and Skoda make up a passenger vehicle division led by former BMW man Herbert Diess. Audi, which is tightly intertwined with Lamborghini and motorcycle manufacturer Ducati, will be managed by current Audi exec Rupert Stadler. Porsche and Bentley, which are already quite close, will be joined by Bugatti and run by Matthias Mueller. Finally, a commercial vehicles division will include Volkswagen Commercial, Scania, and Man. Former Daimler exec Andreas Renschler will take care of the big vehicles. The massive move, according to Automotive News Europe, is part of an internal VAG effort to move away from the structure established by ousted Chairman Ferdinand Piech, who favored a compact, but highly centralized, management structure to oversee the independent actions of the company's brands. Criticism of Piech's arrangement stemmed from the company's slow responses to changes in the market, ANE reports. The new structure should make for a more efficient, streamlined company that's better able to make crucial decisions. What are your thoughts? Should VAG decentralize, or did Piech have the right idea? Have your say in Comments.

Final notes from Porsche Rennsport Reunion V [w/videos]

Having spent three days with an intense Monterey sun above, a fleet of raucous, roaring racecars below, and a genuine library of hundreds of cars parked everywhere, Porsche Rennsport Reunion V can be summed up in one word: amazing. It's one thing to know today that Porsche is special because rich people buy them and collectors obsess over them. It's another thing to see and hear and feel and smell why Porsches are special, to experience what really makes a brand. Whenever auto writers use the word "pedigree" – usually in reference to brands that don't have it – this is what we mean. And we bathed in it for a weekend. Now we need to wash all of our clothes, because pedigree smells like race fuel. Porsche used all of the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca pit garages to set up an excellent display of important Le Mans cars, from the 1958 718 RSK to the current 919 Hybrid. All but one were overall or class winners, and four consecutive pit boxes held cars that were all in the movie Le Mans: a 1969 910, a 1969 917K, a 1970 908 LH "Flunder" Spyder, and a 1971 917 LH. Outside the garage on its own plinth was a 1949 Gmund 356 SL, the first Porsche to win an international motorsports race when it took its 110cc class at Le Mans in 1951. Walking from 1958 to 1998 and having all that history in the metal behind you, you could see why Porsche wanted to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to return to Le Mans with the 919 Hybrid to protect its legacy. Even with three full days we didn't get to see everything we wanted to see or talk to everyone we wanted to talk to. We could have spent days interviewing the Who's Who of racing drivers alone. But we did get to answer the questions you left for us in Comments after our 2017 911 Carrera ride-along: RoninEdge: The engineers had left by the time we got your Boxster/Cayman engine question, and the only answer we could get after that was the official Porsche line: "We haven't released any information on any 2017 models other than the four already mentioned," the 911 Carrera and Carrera S in coupe and cabriolet trims. Ferps: Posche North America decided to take the Targa off the website, but you can still buy 2016 models and there are still Targas on dealer lots. The 991.2 Targa hasn't been revealed yet. JohnnyHedwardsJr: We couldn't review the 911 GTS Rennsport Reunion Edition, but there is a gallery of live images below. Porsche is only making 25, and every one of them is spoken for.

The Volkswagen Group switches official language to English

The Volkswagen Group can't be fairly thought of as entirely German anymore, so the news that the company is switching its official language to English to help attract managers and executives is a rational, if surprising, decision. While many VW Group companies are still staidly German in character and culture, consider the other companies that it controls: Bentley (British), Bugatti (French), Ducati and Lamborghini (Italian), Skoda (Czech), Scania trucks (Swedish), and SEAT (Spanish). Not to mention the large Volkswagen Group of America operation, which constructs cars in Chattanooga, TN. Volkswagen's explicit motivation is to improve management recruitment – making sure the company isn't losing out on candidates for important positions because they can't speak German – and that's inherently sensible in a globalized economy. Particularly considering, like it or lump it, that English is the lingua franca of said global economy. It also should make it inherently easier to communicate between its world-wide subsidiaries and coordinate operations. It's hard to say for sure if this will have any impact on the consumer, although it's easy to see the benefits if, say, VW Group hires some American product planners or engineers and they push for features and designs that more closely suit American needs. After all, the US is a hugely important market for any manufacturer, and so the switch to English almost certainly has something to do with the outsized influence of the US in the global economy. And there doesn't seem to be a downside from a purely rational perspective, although it could mean that the Group's corporate culture becomes less German. Whether that's a good or a bad thing depends on your perspective. Related Video: Image Credit: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images Plants/Manufacturing Audi Bentley Bugatti Porsche Volkswagen SEAT Skoda