You don’t have to found a start-up to create something new. At Seat in Spain it was a small group of car-crazy guys who just started a new car brand. “We didn’t ask anyone, we ran under the radar, and some smiled at us. Today, three years later, we are successful. In all honesty, we are even more successful than we had hoped. And now nobody laughs anymore.” That said Wayne Griffiths (55), CEO of Seat and Cupra, on the stage of the Golden Steering Wheel. With his team he took THREE golden steering wheels for Cupra to Barcelona. Three! The hat trick of the Spaniards in the VW Group, a premiere also for the gala of the Golden Steering Wheel in the journalists’ club of the Springer House in Berlin. And a highlight of many.
The highlights of the evening
The first: that 120 CEOs, managers and communicators got together despite Corona. Under 2G-Plus regulation: vaccinated or recovered, tested on a daily basis. The second: Barbara Schöneberger, the moderator of the evening. Gag excerpt: “1.50 meters safety distance? That’s a Peter Maffay …”. The managing transport minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) had come “with his wife with the cargo bike”. She chatted with Daimler boss Ola Källenius on stage and distributed 12 charming steering wheels with BILD am SONNTAG editor-in-chief Alexandra Würzbach and AUTO BILD boss Tom Drechsler. Also to Audi boss Markus Duesmann, Porsche boss Oliver Blume, Opel boss Uwe Hochgeschurtz, Skoda boss Thomas Schäfer, Toyota boss André Schmidt, Schaeffler board member Matthias Zink. The third highlight: the many encounters, finally real again. VDA boss Hildegard Müller complained “live” about the lame expansion of the e-charging infrastructure in Germany, but praised: “This is finally another great industry get-together.” Not a high point, but still a topic of the evening, also for the heads of Mazda, Peugeot, Genesis and Renault: the semiconductor crisis. The small microchips are even more popular than the golden steering wheel …
