Maserati Merak - by Giugiaro
It’s now official – Volkswagen has taken a 90.1% stake in Giugiaro Italdesign through Lamborghini S.p.A.
Perhaps it makes sense politically for an Italian company to takeover another, but the outcome is the same – VW has taken a majority stake in Italdesign Giugiaro – 90.1% – through its Italian subsidiary Lamborghini Holdings S.p.A. Just as we expected.
And there’s a lot of sense in this move by VW – even if they are going back on their stated intent to end the acquisitions – as there’s a strong history with Giugiaro.
It was Giugiaro and Italdesign who were responsible for the orginal VW Golf and for the VW Passat and Scirocco as well as the Audi 80. But the collaborations are not all in the past, with Italdesign working on the VW Up! project.
Italdesign are far from minnows – turning over €100 million and employing 800 people – and still design for many other companies apart from VW, and have been responsible for the design of 200 models selling 40 million production cars.
It’s unclear whether Italdesign will be working exclusively on VW group projects or will continue as they are.
The smart money’s on VW only.
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