2012 Volkswagen Passat Se Sedan 4-door 2.5l on 2040-cars

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Piech and Winterkorn still at odds about VW leadership plan

Volkswagen Group Chairman Ferdinand Piech (above, right) and CEO Martin Winterkorn (above, left) will be meeting in the coming days to discuss who the next leader of the Volkswagen Group will be. This, of course, comes after a report last Friday in Der Spiegel where Piech said he didn't want Winterkorn to be the automaker's next chairman. Oh, to be a fly on the wall of that conference room. As Automotive News reports, Winterkorn had been widely viewed as the probable replacement for the 77-year-old Piech, until last week, when the current chairman said he was keeping the CEO "at a distance," in the German paper. While Winterkorn confirmed to German media on Monday that he still had a job, analysts aren't sure what Piech's comments will mean for the 67-year-old CEO's future, with some indicating he may end up being a "lame duck" leader. According to AN, Piech doesn't think that Winterkorn has the vision to lead the sprawling Volkswagen Group empire, even though the current CEO has the support of a number of other VAG stakeholders. "Piech knows what he is doing and will assume that he can get the supervisory board to implement his decisions," former BMW executive turned analyst Helmut Becker told German media, AN reports. Winterkorn has just over 18 months left on his contract, while Piech's term has another two years left on it, meaning it will still be some time before we find out how the Volkswagen Group's leadership issues play out.

Winterkorn vacates chairs on Audi, Truck & Bus boards

The last remaining vestiges of Martin Winterkorn's power within the Volkswagen Group are slowly melting away. The former chairman of the group's management board resigned as CEO nearly two months ago in the wake of the diesel emissions scandal. He held onto other roles within the group, but one by one he's been vacating those as well. Last month Winterkorn resigned from his role at Porsche SE – Volkswagen's largest shareholder. Now the latest development comes from Bloomberg, which reports that Winterkorn has stepped down from his role as chairman of the supervisory board at Audi. Prior to his promotion to run the entire group, Winterkorn served as chief executive of the Audi division, and prior to his resignation served continued to serve as its board chairman. No date was given for his resignation from that capacity, nor any successor named at this point. Repeated requests for clarification from Audi have gone unanswered. In correspondence with Autoblog, however, spokespeople for VW's commercial vehicle operations confirmed that Winterkorn has also stepped down as the chairman of the board at Truck & Bus GmbH. The newly established division encompasses truck manufacturers Man and Scania. Winterkorn also served as chairman of Scania's board, but requests for confirmation of his departure from that role also went unanswered. The Swedish truck manufacturer, however, named Henrik Henriksson as its a new chief executive only a few days ago.

Top Gear drag races VW Golf R against McLaren 675LT and Porsche 911

Top Gear's latest quarter-mile drag race in the collects three very different performance vehicles: the 296-horsepower Volkswagen Golf R, 424-hp Porsche 911 Carrera GTS, and 666-hp McLaren 675LT. While each of these cars sit near the top of their segment, they each come from totally different rungs of the sports car price ladder. Spoiler alert, the Golf R doesn't win. But the final results illustrate the diminishing returns of price and performance. For example, the McLaren is only about a second quicker than the Porsche to 60 miles per hour, but the 675LT costs over 2.5 times more that the GTS. Related Video: