Wendelin wiedeking, the punchy boss of Porsche, the world's most profitable small carmaker, has often described his firm as a David amid the industry's Goliaths. In 2002 he published "The David Principle", a book of essays on that theme by some of the great and the good. Time and again, he believes, he has shown that the giants "can't simply flatten all around them and think they will survive". So why has Mr Wiedeking now made a takeover bid, albeit not a serious one, for Volkswagen (vw)-the biggest carmaker in Europe? The official answer is the one he has given since he started buying vw shares in September 2005: to secure his cooperation agreements with vw. Those involve, for example, the chassis design, or platform, on which the Porsche Cayenne sport-utility vehicle, the vw Touareg and the Audi Q7 are based; and the new platform which will underpin the Panamera, a forthcoming Porsche sports car.
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