Volkswagen CEO's History of Sweating the Details Now Haunts Him
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Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn was preparing to build the Passat at a new $1 billion U.S. factory and was not pleased.
Visiting the Tennessee site before the 2011 opening, he berated staff for hanging chrome parts for air vents, doors and gear shifts on the wall. To check that they uniformly glistened before agreeing to use them in the sedan, he wanted them displayed on a table with light shining down at the same angle that customers would see the parts in the car.