Porsche Beetle

[David J Marguglio]

Anyone hear about this???

FRANKFURT (Dow Jones)--Volkswagen AG (VOW.XE) moved to allay concerns about possible conflicts of interest arising from Porsche AG's new stake in the company, saying it plans to negotiate a contract "with the goal of (establishing) a fair balance of interests for the future operating cooperation" with the luxury auto maker.

The company released only a brief statement late Monday that provided no additional details about its planned future cooperation with Porsche. A VW spokesman said the company's CEO, Bernd Pischetsrieder, would describe details of the planned agreement during a conference call Tuesday.

[Jad]

Yeah, where have you been. Porsche bought 20% of VW to save VW from a foreign takeover. See, those excessive profits may save the VW Golf GTI

My theory is that they really want a guaranteed buyer of the technology Porsche is spending a billion Euro to develop in the Panamerica sedan. Now they know Audi, Bentley and VW will help with the costs just like with the Cayenne that made them so much money. Profit margins can be pretty high when you have no internal development costs

Seems like smart business, though no passion and they could have spent the money on 2 or 3 seasons of losing in F1 instead

[Dan Chambers]

Based on past history, a VW / Porsche joint affair isn't such a bad thing, vs. an American company stepping in....IMHO. And, keeping it all "in Germany" is good for the German economy .... which is good for German companies like Porsche...... which is good for R and D of new models (and hopefully, a racing program ). I hope VW is giving Porsche lots 'o' thanks for the boost.