As has been rumored since the summer, Stephan Winkelmann, the Volkswagen Group's only qualified paratrooper executive, will replace Wolfgang Dürheimer as President of Bugatti.

The German born, Italian raised CEO leaves his Audi Sport position for VW's halo brand, after making a name for himself by leading Lamborghini for eleven years. He will be replaced by Michael-Julius Renz, the current president of Audi China's sales division.

Once Winkelmann was done taking the Italian supercar brand into the 21st century (despite keeping its engines naturally aspirated), he arrived at Audi Sport just in time to launch their first rear-wheel drive supercar, the R8 RWS. A car perhaps some of you also know as the Lamborghini Huracan LP 580-2.

Winkelmann isn't the only one leaving Audi Sport. Stephan Reil, the man responsible for every Audi RS model since 1999, as well as the R8 has also moved to a yet-announced position elsewhere in the company. That decision came soon after Winkelmann announced that Audi will need to launch a whole fleet of new RS models before the brand can start thinking about building its own hypercar.

Wolfgang Dürheimer's retirement brings major changes to Bentley as well, where the role of the CEO will be taken by former Jaguar-Land Rover global strategy director Adrian Hallmark. Bentley has also made three further appointments to its board. Werner Tietz moves over from Porsche to head up engineering, succeeding Rolf Frech. Chris Craft, Porsche GB’s managing director, will replace Andreas Offermann as sales and marketing chief, while Astrid Fontaine, previously of Porsche North America, will head up people, digitization and IT starting next year.



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