BMW has brought in Tony Gott, the former chief executive of Rolls Royce and Bentley Motor Cars at Volkswagen, to revive its new Rolls Royce unit.
BMW has brought in Tony Gott, the former chief executive of Rolls Royce and Bentley Motor Cars at Volkswagen, to revive its new Rolls Royce unit.
The 45-year-old will take over as chairman of the business unit from March. He replaces Karl-Heinz Kalbfell, senior vice-president for group marketing, who has been managing the Rolls-Royce preparations for the past 18 months.
“Having been the chief executive of Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motor Cars at Crewe, Tony Gott will bring to this role his long-established experience with the brand,” BMW said in a statement.
Gott resigned as head of Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motor Cars in a Volkswagen shake-up late last year. The outgoing Audi boss Franze-Josef Paefgen took charge of the luxury brands.
Gott will be responsible for trying to rebuild sales following a sharp decline last year. Bentley sales rose modestly to 1 045 in the first nine months of 2001, while Rolls-Royce fell from 62 to just 42. He will also be in charge of setting up a car manufacturing and distribution structure for the “new” Rolls-Royce from scratch.
He will oversee completion of a new R960 million factory for Rolls-Royce in Goodwood, in the south of England. It will be completed before BMW takes control in 2003.
BMW hopes to assemble and sell up to 1 000 Rolls-Royce cars a year when it starts production. The German manufacturer has already begun recruiting the first of 350 workers for the site.
BMW signed an agreement with VW in 1998 that it would take over the Rolls-Royce brand from 2003, while VW will retain the Bentley brand.
In 2000, VW’s Rolls-Royce subsidiary lost R1,7 billion before tax.