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kottke.org posts about Porsche

How Porsches are made: by hand

posted by Jason Kottke   Dec 15, 2009

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

posted by Jason Kottke   Jan 12, 2009

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

posted by Jason Kottke   Oct 28, 2008

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 €150bn.

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