Karl-Thomas Neumann
Step into Karl-Thomas Neumann’s office at Continental, the German car parts supplier, and you notice a small car designed for a child. One of the best-equipped toys in the world has everything Mr Neumann developed at Volkswagen: satellite navigation, and state-of-art entertainment with CD and DVD players housed in a tiny plastic shell.
Despite the complexity of the devices, everything works together. Since Conti’s €11.4bn purchase of VDO from Siemens last year, which catapulted it into the group of the world’s leading suppliers, Mr Neumann has to achieve something similar with his company.
The jovial red-haired manager – a fanatical runner who is seen as one of two internal candidates to be Conti’s next chief executive – has to meld together the differing cultures of Conti and VDO and its businesses from brakes to motors.
Mr Neumann is not afraid of tough decisions. Not only is Conti known for its brutal concentration on costs and outsourcing production to eastern Europe, but Mr Neumann recently caused a stir in Frankfurt by criticising the mayor, Petra Roth.
“I got the impression that we are seen as not interesting and nothing would be done for us,” he said, criticising Ms Roth’s decision not to celebrate the company’s 100th anniversary. Workers at VDO, not used to criticism from their former Siemens bosses, had better watch out.
Wolfgang Porsche
Wolfgang Porsche and Ferdinand Piëch, chairmen of Porsche and Volkswagen respectively and the heads of the two families that control the German carmakers, were arguing at a recent Porsche management board meeting.
The two men sent everyone else out of the room, and when they returned, there was a surprising winner: Mr Porsche.
There are few surnames so redolent in the automobile world as Porsche. But for a long time the family has stood in the shadow of an offshoot: the Piëchs, who provided Ferdinand, VW’s powerful former chief executive who always used to get his way.
But Mr Porsche has quietly pitted himself against Mr Piëch in one of the most daring exploits in recent corporate history. Mr Porsche may not have been the driving force behind his far smaller company’s seizing control at VW, where it holds 31 per cent, but he has cleverly used the consequences.
“They are not scratching out each other’s eyes but it is no secret that the Porsches and Piëchs [who together hold all the voting rights at Porsche] were never really a loving couple,” says an executive who knows both well.
The 64-year-old Mr Porsche is described as a “gentleman, who keeps himself to himself but is very pleasant to talk with”. One confidant says: “He is usually underestimated. But if he is against something it doesn’t happen.”
His growing strength – and closeness to his chief executive, Wendelin Wiedeking – gives the power games at Porsche and VW a new dimension.
Stefan Jacoby
He is known in Volkswagen’s headquarters as a “biter”. Once Stefan Jacoby gets hold of something, he doesn’t let go. At Europe’s largest carmaker he now has hold of something big – their long-suffering US business.
Mr Jacoby’s job is to do what endless predecessors couldn’t achieve and make VW profitable in the US. At the same time, the former head of Mitsubishi in Europe needs to prepare for the building of a new factory there, and a move of the group from Detroit to a suburb of Washington DC.
“Jacoby is quite an aggressive guy and we need somebody like that in the US because he has to change everything at once,” a senior VW manager says. “He is a figures person.”
VW has lost billions in the US recently through a poor model policy and not knowing what Americans really want from its cars. VW’s answer seems to be again that Germans know best.
“People who buy VWs in America do it because they are different so we shouldn’t make cars like GM or Chrysler,” says a manager. “Jacoby just goes on and on in a straight line once he gets started.” VW has to hope it is the right straight line.
Luca De Meo
At the tender age of 40, Luca De Meo has been handed one of the most sensitive jobs in Fiat’s turnround. Sergio Marchionne has asked him to shepherd Alfa Romeo, Fiat’s underperforming premium brand, back into the rank of top-notch luxury brands and, by the end of the decade, into the US market.
Mr De Meo is probably the best-known of the junior deputies Mr Marchionne posted around Fiat after he took over the then-troubled group four years ago. As head of the Fiat car brand until last September, he was instrumental in restoring its lustre as a top-flight maker of small cars, including well-received revamps of the Bravo and the Punto.
The retro-chic Cinquecento minicar, relaunched last year, is beating Fiat’s sales forecasts, and won the coveted European Car of the Year award for 2008.
For his efforts at Fiat, Mr Marchionne promoted Mr De Meo to head brand marketing-related activities across the group, including its Iveco trucks division, Ferrari, and Maserati. In December Mr Marchionne tapped him to revive Alfa Romeo as its chief executive. Mr De Meo’s first Fiat job was heading Lancia, so he will now have run Fiat’s three main car brands.
The Alfa brief could prove a plum job or a poisoned chalice, depending on Mr De Meo’s efforts – and his luck. Alfa’s brand equity has been eroded in recent years by a reputation for unreliability and bad after-sales service.
Financial losses and modest unit sales of about 165,000 a year invite the questions over long-term viability also faced by Jaguar, another struggling European luxury marque.
Fiat wants to relaunch Alfa in America in the autumn of 2009, but Mr De Meo will have to contend with the weak dollar and a competitive market.
Most of all, however, he will have to improve Alfa’s network, and produce more cars that can command luxury prices. The brand’s latest effort, the Junior, is on show this week in Geneva.
Patrick Pélata
Car companies are never one-man shows, and even star chief executive Carlos Ghosn’s Renault is no exception. Patrick Blain, who runs sales and marketing, Thierry Moulonguet, head of finance, and Odile Desforges, head of procurement for both Renault and its alliance partner Nissan, are all important in delivering Mr Ghosn’s promises to shareholders.
However the 52-year-old Patrick Pélata, Renault’s head of product planning, is arguably the crucial figure. Mr Ghosn’s promises to lift profits hinge on the relaunch of 26 models by 2009. Mr Pélata’s broad brief includes electric vehicles, an area where Renault and Nissan are trying to act early. He has been a right-hand man to Mr Ghosn since his days in Tokyo as part of the Renault team that turned around Nissan.
Although Renault/Nissan’s CEO gets most of the newsprint himself, journalists find Mr Pelata refreshingly frank. Visitors to the Geneva show can judge one of his efforts in the Koleos, Renault’s first crossover vehicle. A revamped Mégane, one of Europe’s top-selling cars, is set to make its debut later this year in Paris.
Jim Farley
Whispers were rising last autumn that Alan Mulally had not done enough in his first year as Ford Motor’s CEO to shake up the carmaker’s notoriously hidebound management. They quickly died down on news that he had hired Jim Farley to take charge of marketing and communications.
The 45-year-old Mr Farley, who has a boyish manner, came to Dearborn after 17 years with Toyota, where he made his mark with an innovative marketing strategy for Scion, Toyota’s youth-oriented brand. Scion virtually ignores the mainstream media, depending on such tactics as vehicle displays outside nightclubs.
Mr Farley faces several big tests at Ford. His first will be the introduction this summer of the Flex, a crossover designed to replace Ford’s discontinued minivans. Later in the year, a new model of the F-150 pick-up – North America’s top-selling vehicle and the backbone of Ford’s profits – will seek to claw back sales from GM’s Chevrolet Silverado and the Toyota Tundra.
Ford is also pinning high hopes on the Verve, a small car that will go on sale first in Europe and Asia, then North America in 2010.
Jim Lentz
Jim Lentz took over as president of Toyota’s US sales unit last year. Although not the division’s chief executive, he has become the Japanese carmaker’s most visible face in North America since the departure of his former boss, Jim Press.
Mr Lentz, 52, has served in several parts of Toyota’s sales operation since joining the company as a regional merchandising manager in Portland, Oregon, in 1982. He was closely involved in an intensive study by Toyota of the youth market in the mid-1990s. The study’s recommendation of a new brand culminated in the launch of Scion.
A competitive golfer, one-time ice hockey player and avid cook (especially of Asian wok dishes), Mr Lentz is known as a decisive but approachable manager.
Jim Press
In the twilight of his career, Jim Press has gone from one of the industry’s most envied jobs to one of its most challenging. Less than six months after being named as Toyota’s first non-Japanese director last year, Mr Press, 61, jumped ship to become joint vice-chairman and president of Chrysler. He had worked for Toyota for 37 years.
Mr Press is charged with fixing some of the Detroit carmaker’s most intractable problems – mediocre quality of its vehicles, poor relations with its 3,600 dealers, and its heavy dependence on SUVs, pick-up trucks and minivans, three of the weakest market segments.
He has a reputation as both a demanding taskmaster and a skilled diplomat.
These attributes have been seen at Chrysler as Mr Press has ordered scores of changes to its vehicles. He questioned why the knee-blocker on one new model’s dashboard was so low, and why an instrument panel could not be made in one section instead of four. At his suggestion, Chrysler has closed its executive dining room.
