London Southbank University have a very special guest in one of their lecture halls. Richard Ide, former MD of Volkswagen Group UK will be talking about his life, and his book 'In the Driving Seat'. Students be excited for the monumental moment where you get to listen to and get your book signed by a true motoring legend. Shed weight and add speed' - motor racing formula The third generation of his family to work in the motoring industry, Richard Ide's spectacular career took him from apprentice fitter at Vauxhall Motors in the 1950s to the Head of Volkswagen Group UK in the 1990s, during which period he was responsible for turning around the fortunes of six motoring businesses in the intervening forty years. Writing with the clarity, perceptiveness and sense of purpose that were the hallmarks of his management style, Ide keeps his often pioneering achievements in perspective, giving due weight to his occasional business failures and taking care to acknowledge the vital importance of the various teams he worked with during his career. While the book provides many fascinating business insights, the sheer verve of Ide's writing guarantees that it is far from a mere recitation of management-speak. He provides evocative, often humorous portraits of his colleagues, delivers a vivid history lesson about motoring's early days and captures that extraordinary time in post-war motor racing - which became an absorbing, if expensive, hobby for him in his late teens and early twenties - when legendary figures like Fangio and Stirling Moss risked their lives on a regular basis.