VW’s new step shows why the carmaker is losing the best technology, its R in its new form cannot work

In the end, what does a similar company have besides educated staff with appropriate experience? There is not much, but the really capable ones will not associate their name with nonsense. Purely electric sharp R models are nonsense, which is why VW lost Jost Capita, among other things. Nevertheless, they continue in the same direction.

Some would love for the world to be moved forward by teams of average people in joint meetings, but my life experience says that this is usually not the case. A few exceptionally gifted individuals who have the ability to see what others cannot see usually move things forward. They must be intelligent, educated, and when they combine this with a kind of stubbornness and a desire to prove something, over time they will come to experience that others can only dream of.

Such individuals should then be followed and try to take advantage of their exceptionality, as they are able to take care of similarly exceptional products. Some companies are able to respect this, but we often witness how the views of such people are resisted by the less capable majority. But some kind of democracy does not work in these spheres, and just as “a waterfall of words cannot save what was once said” and 300 average musicians will not pass for one Mozart, nor will 300 average technicians pass for one genius.

One such is Jost Capito, one of the most incompetent automotive technicians of recent decades, whom we have been able to meet in person in several of his roles in the past. He has proven his talent in an incredible number of roles, he is far from the “protégé” of one car company. He started as an engine developer at BMW (he also participated in the legendary M3 E30 engines, including the Evo and M5 E28 versions), continued at Porsche, where he advocated for some of the famous sports models (such as the Porsche 911 964 Carrera RS), literally built sports cars division of Ford (cars like the first Focus RS are his work) and subsequently enjoyed perhaps the most fame as head of the sports division of Volkswagen.

The entire era of dominance of the brand in the WRC was mainly his merit, as well as the creation of today’s valued road models such as the VW Golf VII R. He remained in this role until the end of 2020, when he left due to his disagreement with the direction of the brand. Unlike others, he did not want to bet everything on one card and rejected sports electric cars. “Electric cars can impress with straight-line speed, but that alone is not enough. The great time needed to accelerate from standstill to 100 will simply not be enough in the future to have an exciting sports car,” said the head of the R division shortly before his end. And he spoke of electric cars in this regard as useless cars, the development of which is under the VW banner R is not on the agenda.

Being at the helm to this day, it still applies, but VW decided to rub his views and kicked him out of the company with the feeling that others know more. From that moment on, he started talking about future R’s as electric cars, because when a car company makes everything electric, it won’t offer its top models with other technology. At the same time, this flat-rate approach is the most blunt possible, because what works for one use may not work for another. Electric cars with their current limits stemming mainly from batteries cannot function as good sports cars, after all, even the top electric Porsche recently showed us this in full nakedness.

Aces like Capito can’t associate their name with something like that, so they’re gone, while VW and a bunch of “believers” continue to pursue their impossible dream. So he recently announced that he will make R a separate premium brand that will offer only electric cars from 2030. For this purpose, he set aside a separate pavilion with presentation rooms in the premises of his headquarters, which will be used to display new models and as a meeting place for owners and fans. It’s hard to say what you can imagine under that, but that’s quite unimportant, the key is the absurd direction of the whole R. With the energy requirements of powerful cars and the weight and capacity of current and any sooner future cars, something like this cannot work well enough exactly as Jost said C.

However, the current head of the R division, Reinhold Ivenz, is understandably full of optimism and sees the reserved space in the so-called Autostadt as an important step for Volkswagen R, which, as part of the transition to an all-electric range, is “reorganizing itself for the future” and “with the transition to a purely electric brand, it will also intensify customer experience”. That’s for sure, an empty battery after a few tens of kilometers of intense driving will certainly be a very intense experience, an unforgettable experience. Jost Capito will not be there and neither will we – we are curious which of the customers will join instead.

The Volkswagen R division as we know it is amen. VW is pushing electric cars so much that it is literally walking over corpses and wants to electrify 100% even the sharp R by 2030. We are not surprised that Jost Capito didn’t want to be there, it doesn’t make sense. How many other capable technicians do we know about him leaving because of this? Photo: Volkswagen

Source: Volkswagen

Peter Miller

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