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Volkswagen Buys Italdesign Giugiaro

Just as the infamous inside sources have been speculating for days now, German carmaker Volskwagen announced it has purchased a majority stake in Italian design and engineering company Italdesign Giugiaro.

The agreement between the two companies states that VW will purchase 90.1 percent of the Italian company, for an yet undisclosed sum. The majority stake will not pass over to VW itself, as they have been acquired by Audi's (part of the VW group) Lamborghini Holding subsidiary. The remainder of the shares will stay with the Giugiaro family.

"With this shareholding in Italdesign, we are participating in one of the most renowned design and development companies with one of the richest traditions in the automobile industry," Martin Winterkorn, Volkswagen chairman of the board said in a statement at a joint conference.

"Italdesign is the flagship for creative Italian automobile design and has been instrumental in shaping the face of the automobile industry worldwide. As the creator of the Golf I, Giorgetto Giugiaro laid a new foundation for Volkswagen design in the 1970s."

"Every drop becomes the sea when it flows oceanward. In the last few days I ran into this sentence while I was reading Sophie`s World by the Norwegian novelist Jostein Gaardner. We are the drop. Becoming part of the Volkswagen Group means revaluating ourselves and our strength. Entering Volkswagen means to open up a promising perspective for the company," Giorgetto Giugiaro added.

The purchase does not mark the first time Italdesign Giugiaro works with Volkswagen. The company's designers have created several highly successful VW vehicles, including VW Golf Mk1, the Scirocco Mk1, the Passat Mk1, the Audis 80 and 100, the 1991 Seat Toledo and the 1993 Seat Ibiza.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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