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kottke.org posts about Porsche

How Porsches are made: by hand

Here’s the first part in a series of five videos from the 1960s that show how Porsches are made:

A Continuous Lean has the other four parts.


Porsche’s financial hack

I mentioned the Porsche/VW financial incident briefly in October, but this is an excellent layman’s explanation of what happened.

Porsche’s move took three years of careful maneuvering. It was darkly brilliant, a wealth transfer ingeniously conceived like few we’ve ever seen. Betting the right way, Porsche roiled the financial markets and took the hedge funds for a fortune.

(via capn design)

Update: Not so fast there, Porsche. Bloomberg says that the company may not have the money necessary to exercise those options and realize $24.3 billion in profits.

Update (10/2014): In a stunning reversal, VW ended up buying Porsche instead of the other way around. Here’s the whole story.


Volkswagen = world’s largest company

Volkswagen was briefly the world’s largest company in terms of market cap today.

Volkswagen briefly became the world’s largest company by market capitalisation on Tuesday as panic-buying by hedge funds desperate to cover losses caused its value to shoot up by up to โ‚ฌ150bn.

Porsche revealed that it owned 74% of VW instead of the previously assumed 35%…which caused panicked buying by hedge funds. (via mr)