The family tree present at the beginning of the book offers an early clue to the centrality of the family story to Volkswagen’s fate. In others, it becomes a family biography, looking in particular at Ferdinand Piëch, CEO of Volkswagen from 1993 to 2002 and the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche who worked with Hitler to design what later became the Beetle. In the era of Cold War competition that followed, VW became a pin up for free-market capitalism against Soviet communism, despite being state owned until 1960. In places it is a rich economic history, particularly in its discussion of the importance of the VW brand to Germany’s economic renaissance after the Second World War. The book covers the history of Volkswagen, from the days of Hitler’s Herbie, to the ongoing fraud cases in US and European Courts. The makings of a book were there, and Ewing’s Faster, Higher, Farther: The Inside Story of the Volkswagen Scandal, is the result. It was a modern day Aesop’s Fable, a corporate giant undone by its own arrogance, complacency, and the voices of the unheard. “And that is all it took to really shake the foundations of this enormous carmaker.”

“This whole scandal was uncovered by a group of graduate students at West Virginia University with a $70,000 grant.”Įwing is telling me what first drew him to look deeper at the downfall of a firm synonymous with German economic power. There was none of the greed of Enron, only a hunger to go faster, higher, and further than anyone had before. No-one had lined their pockets with gold. This was to prove no normal tale of corporate fraud.

Jack ewing volkswagen