Mr. Müller, 62 years old, faces the task of steering Europe’s largest auto maker through a maze of investigations and litigation that is likely to trouble the company for years. Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency disclosed that Volkswagen admitted using software on some of its VW and Audi diesel-powered cars to dupe U.S. emissions tests. VW on Tuesday said the software was installed on as many as 11 million cars world-wide. The company issued a profit warning and announced it was taking a €6.5 billion ($7.27 billion) provision against earnings to cover the costs of fixing the vehicles. The onetime apprentice toolmaker also must come to terms with running a company of massive size and influence. Mr. Müller will oversee a €200 billion-in-sales auto maker that produces inexpensive Czech-made Skoda cars, mainstream brands like Spain’s SEAT and its world-known Volkswagen models, as well as luxury vehicles from Bentley and Audi, and sports cars from Porsche, Lamborghini and Bugatti. What began 78 years ago as a project to churn out low-cost Beetles has evolved into a global empire that sells 10 million cars a year, produced at more than 100 factories from China to Chattanooga, Tenn., and employs more than half a million people. The management upheaval is a bitter victory for Ferdinand Piëch, scion of Beetle inventor Ferdinand Porsche, who was forced in April to resign as chairman in the wake of a failed attempt to oust Mr. Winterkorn. “Ironically, Piëch finally gets what he was aiming for, a new CEO. Unfortunately, it needed an expensive external catalyst,” said Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst at Evercore ISI research group. He said Mr. Müller is a “good choice” albeit likely a transitional figure while other internal candidates have time to prove their mettle. “Our company was dishonest with the EPA, the California Air Resources Board, and with all of you,” Michael Horn, head of VW’s U.S. business told customers and dealers in New York on Tuesday. “We screwed up.” This week, the company’s top shareholders and labor leaders on the supervisory board forced Mr. Winterkorn to resign. People familiar with the situation said three of the company’s most senior engineers have been asked to turn in their resignations. They include Ulrich Hackenberg, the chief engineer at Audi who is widely considered the father of VW’s modular manufacturing system which has helped cut production costs, Wolfgang Hatz, the research and development chief at Porsche, and Heinz-Jakob Neusser, a development chief who once designed engines for Porsche, people familiar with the situation said. Mr. Hatz and Mr. Hackenberg were key allies of Mr. Winterkorn, the people said. The three didn't respond to requests for comment. The VW Passat, Jetta and Audi A3 at the center of the EPA probe are built on the same platform, which is why they use the same diesel engine software programmed to fool emissions testers. It wasn't clear how the three engineers are linked to the emissions crisis, but all were involved in the development of VW engines. In a move to rebuild VW’s flagging business in the U.S., people familiar with the situation said the supervisory board is expected to send Winfried Vahland, CEO of Skoda, to run Volkswagen of America. Mr. Vahland, 58, a former manufacturing strategy review chief at General Motors Europe, transformed Skoda, the car maker that VW purchased after the fall of the Berlin Wall, from a former Communist state-run conglomerate into one of the fastest growing car brands in Europe. Using the same platform that VW’s Passat and Golf are built on, Mr. Vahland has turned Skoda’s Octavia, Fabia and Superb into some of the best-selling cars in Europe. Mr. Winterkorn tried to govern Volkswagen’s unruly empire from the top down, turning its Wolfsburg, Germany, base into a bottleneck that made the company sluggish and unable to respond quickly to shifting trends in technology and regional markets, analysts said. Mr. Müller was born in Chemnitz, in East Germany, and moved to the West as a child. Today, he sports a crop of white hair and enjoys the confidence of the Porsche-Piëch clan that controls the company. He became CEO of Porsche in 2010, returned the brand to Le Mans racing and oversaw its rapid sales expansion with sport-utility vehicles. He studied computer science and began his career at Audi, the luxury car maker owned by Volkswagen, running its product management. When Mr. Winterkorn took the helm in 2007, he tapped Mr. Müller to oversee product strategy, putting him in charge of all of its brands. Mr. Müller now must reorganize the company to make it more responsive while limiting the risk of another major crisis by imposing new structures. “If you have a complicated structure where it is difficult to monitor behavior, it’s particularly likely to be a problem,” said Zacharias Sautner, a specialist in corporate governance at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. —Ilka Kopplin and Monica Houston-Waesch contributed to this article. Write to William Boston at william.boston@wsj.com and Hendrik Varnholt at hendrik.varnholt@wsj.com Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Matthias Muller , the current chief of Volkswagen subsidiary CNBC , is expected to be named CEO of The VW Board , sources close to the VW Supervisory Board reported yesterday . The VW Board will hold a previously scheduled meeting in Wolfsburg , Germany , yesterday , where sources with knowledge of the situation say Muller will be tapped for the top job at VW. One person close to Volkswagen 's leadership told the VW Supervisory Board that Matthias Muller "has strong support on the board."