Carl Hahn, who led Volkswagen Group’s worldwide enlargement within the Nineteen Eighties, died on Saturday. He was 96.

Hahn died in his sleep at his residence in Wolfsburg, in response to a spokeswoman from his charitable basis. A ceremony is deliberate for Jan. 24.

Born in Chemnitz in japanese Germany in 1926, Carl Horst Hahn Jr studied enterprise administration and economics, receiving a doctorate from the College of Bern.

He joined VW in 1954 and have become its chief in 1982. Throughout his decade-long tenure, VW constructed factories in China, acquired Seat in Spain and Skoda within the Czech Republic, and expanded into former communist East Germany.

“Till then we had been too centered on Germany, we had been a nationwide firm. Apart from the People, there have been no world manufacturers,” Hahn stated in a 2020 interview with Automotive Information Group’s German language publication Automobilwoche.

“We began with Seat and had been in a position to get Volkswagen out of a disaster after we had been solely dropping cash in our German factories,” he stated.

Hahn additionally began Audi’s transition to the luxury-car phase.

Within the Nineteen Sixties, Hahn led VW’s enterprise within the U.S. and helped set up the Beetle as an icon of American popular culture. Disagreements over technique led to his departure to tire-maker Continental in 1972 earlier than returning 10 years later.

After being succeeded as Volkswagen CEO by Ferdinand Piech in 1992, Hahn served one other 5 years on the corporate’s supervisory board.

Hahn chronicled his profession within the autobiography “My Years With Volkswagen,” revealed in 2005.