By CARTER DOUGHERTY
Published: June 19, 2009 NY Times
FRANKFURT — When Wolfgang Porsche learned that his family’s sports car company would need an emergency cash infusion from its giant rival Volkswagen, he “went absolutely white.”
“It was as though he’d heard someone died,” said one person briefed on the secret meeting between executives of the two companies.
The meeting, at the offices of the governor of Lower Saxony state, where Volkswagen is based, effectively ended the company’s audacious bid for Europe’s largest automaker. It also was the beginning of the end of Porsche’s cherished independence.