11 Facts About Rudolf Leiding

Rudolf Leiding was the third post-war chairman of the Volkswagen automobile company, succeeding Kurt Lotz in 1971.

Rudolf Leiding arrived at the top Volkswagen job with a reputation as a successful trouble-shooter.

Demand for the Ingolstadt plant's output did not justify a night shift at this time, and Rudolf Leiding took to walking through the plant at night in the company of a photographer.

In July 1968, Rudolf Leiding left Ingolstadt to take on the chairmanship of Volkswagen of Brazil.

Less than three weeks after taking over from Lotz at Wolfsburg, Rudolf Leiding halted work on EA266.

Rudolf Leiding pointed out that the Volkswagen group was producing eight disparate "volume" models, including five that had been launched within the last five years as part of an urgent if unfocused attempt to reduce Volkswagen's dependence on the aging Beetle.

Rudolf Leiding described the key to his solution as the "Baukastensystem" whereby an entire palette of cars could be designed, ranging from a rival for the super-mini class defining Fiat 127 right up to a full-size family car, all of them sharing the same essential design architecture and most of their components.

Rudolf Leiding came to the challenge of turning round Volkswagen with experience and a good engineer's instinct for production engineering: what he now set out was no more than an extension of the strategy already implemented when in 1965 he had been sent by Heinrich Nordhoff, then the Volkswagen chief, to "sort out" the group's new acquisition at Ingolstadt.

Nevertheless, 1974 was a critical year for another reason: it was the year in which Golfs started emerging for the Wolfsburg plant, and Rudolf Leiding's successor reaped the reward of a DM 1,000 Million profit two years later in 1976.

Rudolf Leiding left the company early in 1975 and was replaced by Toni Schmucker.

Rudolf Leiding died on 3 September 2003, one day before his 89th birthday.