2010 Porsche Cayenne on 2040-cars

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VW CFO Hans Dieter Potsch nominated as new board chairman

The search for a successor to Ferdinand Piech has come to an end as the Volkswagen Group has nominated a new chairman. The Executive and Nomination committees of VW's Supervisory Board have put their weight behind one Hans Dieter Potsch, who currently serves on the company's management board as its chief financial officer. He's expected to continue in his current role until November when an extraordinary general meeting of the supervisory board can be called to confirm his nomination and a replacement CFO can be found to take his place. As you may recall, the chairmanship of the Volkswagen board fell until recently to Ferdinand Piech, grandson of Ferdinand Porsche and one of the principals of the Porsche family that holds over 50 percent ownership in Volkswagen through Porsche Automobil Holding SE. Piech went head to head with VW CEO Martin Winterkorn and ultimately lost. Piech resigned and Winterkorn is about to have his term as chief executive extended through the end of 2018. In Piech's place, former union head Berthold Huber was named as interim chairman, but is now referred to in the statement below once again as deputy chairman instead. An Austrian native, Potsch is an industrial engineer by training. He started his career at BMW where he ultimately served as group controller, and subsequently served as CFO and as chairman at a number of German corporations. Potsch joined the VW management board in 2003, initially without portfolio, and soon assumed the financial portfolio – a role he has held until now. In 2009 he took on the additional role of chief financial officer at the Porsche holding company, whose supervisory board representatives are the parties proposing Potsch's nomination as the group's new chairman – even though he is not, strictly speaking, one of their own. In a related development, it appears that Julia Kuhn-Piech will be leaving her board seat sooner than expected. The departing chairman Ferdinand Piech opposed his niece's nomination to the board in his place, and now she'll apparently be stepping down to make way for the family's new choice of chairman.

RM Sotheby's Turbollection features exotics from the '80s and '90s

If you have even a passing interest in cars, there's little doubt you know a thing or two about Porsche, whether the topic centers around a classic name like 911 or the more mainstream Cayenne and Macan crossovers. Bugatti? Sure, most people know about the historic French builder of world-class, record-setting automobiles, though admittedly the EB110 we're about to show you probably wouldn't be the first to come to mind. Fewer are likely familiar with the likes of Vector Aeromotive, a tiny American company with history that dates back to the 1980s. And we'd wager that most have never even heard of the likes of Isdera and Cizeta. Brush up on your history, (super wealthy car collecting) folks. RM Sotheby's has an exciting array of cars coming up for auction during the Monterey Car Week festivities on California. Among all the expected Ferrari, Lamborghini and Shelby classics potential buyers can wade through, the so-called Turbollection collection features much rarer oddities.

Trump calls Germans 'very bad,' vows to stop their car sales in US

TAORMINA, Italy -Talks between President Trump and other leaders of the world's rich nations at the G7 summit on Friday were expected to be "robust" and "challenging" after he had lambasted NATO allies and condemned Germans as "very bad" for their trade policies. Trump's confrontational remarks in Brussels, on the eve of the two-day summit in the Mediterranean resort town of Taormina, cast a pall over a meeting at which America's partners had hoped to coax him into softening his stances on trade and climate change. According to German media reports, Trump condemned Germany as "very bad" for its trade policies in a meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, signaling he might take steps to limit sales of German cars in the United States. "The Germans are bad, very bad," he reportedly told Juncker. "Look at the millions of cars that they're selling in the USA. Horrible. We're gonna stop that." White House economic adviser Gary Cohn on Friday confirmed the reports. "He said they're very bad on trade, but he doesn't have a problem with Germany." Cohn said Trump had pointed out during the meeting that his father had German roots in order to underscore the message that he had nothing against the German people. Trump's spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump had "tremendous respect" for Germany and had only complained about unfair trade practices in the meeting. Juncker called the reports in Spiegel Online and Sueddeutsche Zeitung exaggerated. The reports translated "bad" with the German word "boese," which can also mean "evil," leading to confusion when English-language media translated the German reports back into English. "The record has to be set straight," Juncker said, noting that the translation issue had exaggerated the seriousness of what Trump had said. "It's not true that the president took an aggressive approach when it came to the German trade surplus." "He said, like others have, that (the United States) has a problem with the German surplus. So he was not aggressive at all," Juncker added. In January, Trump threatened to slap a 35 percent tax on German auto imports. "If you want to build cars in the world, then I wish you all the best. You can build cars for the United States, but for every car that comes to the USA, you will pay 35 percent tax," he said. "I would tell BMW that if you are building a factory in Mexico and plan to sell cars to the USA, without a 35 percent tax, then you can forget that." Last year, the U.S.