Volkswagen Plans to Sell Celebrated Design Firm Italdesign to Cut Costs: Report
VW took over the design house responsible for the Mk 1 Golf in 2010. Now, trade union members are concerned about its future. The post Volkswagen Plans to Sell Celebrated Design Firm Italdesign to Cut Costs: Report appeared first on The Drive.
Volkswagen is reportedly looking to sell Italian design and engineering firm Italdesign in a bid to cut operating costs.
The sale was announced internally on May 5, during a meeting held at Italdesign’s headquarters near Turin, Italy, attended by over 1,000 employees, according to Italian newspaper Corriere Della Serra. It sounds like the meeting asked more questions than it answered.
“This news makes us very worried, because we don’t know what will happen to the future of a company that has been and still is a flagship of the region,” said Gianni Mannori, a member of the Fiom Cgil trade union, in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere Della Serra.
Volkswagen hasn’t publicly announced plans to sell Italdesign yet, but the report claims that the group has already taken the steps required to offload the brand, including due diligence and the valuation procedure. It’s still too early to tell how much Italdesign is worth, though the company is profitable and doing relatively well, and it’s also unclear who might be interested in it. We’ve reached out to Italdesign for more information.
Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro founded Italdesign with Aldo Mantovani in 1968. The design house has styled a long list of influential cars, including the Alfa Romeo Alfasud, the original Volkswagen Golf (sold as the Rabbit in the United States), the Hyundai Pony, the first-generation Fiat Panda, and the Subaru SVX. It has several cool concepts on its resume, too. Lamborghini purchased a 90.1% stake in Italdesign in May 2010, which put the styling house under the Volkswagen Group’s control, and the takeover was completed in July 2015.
Several Volkswagen-related projects emerged in the subsequent years, such as a flying car developed with Audi and Airbus. However, Volkswagen’s goal wasn’t to turn Italdesign into its internal design center. The brand continued to work for companies outside of the Volkswagen Group even after the takeover. In 2018, it collaborated with Nissan to turn the R35-generation GT-R into a limited-edition, 720-horsepower coupe called GT-R50. Italdesign has also designed cars for a variety of Chinese brands in the past few years.
More details about the deal could emerge after a second meeting planned for later in May. Volkswagen hasn’t yet commented on the report.
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The post Volkswagen Plans to Sell Celebrated Design Firm Italdesign to Cut Costs: Report appeared first on The Drive.
