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Audi of America taking baby steps to distance itself from Volkswagen

Audi of America taking baby steps to distance itself from Volkswagen

Posted Apr 25th 2006 7:04PM

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Before moving off Volkswagen of America's Auburn Hills campus entirely, Audi will first take a smaller step. Without doing something as drastic as moving to the East Coast, Audi will physically create its own environment by moving about 200 employees into two buildings of their own on VW's campus. Audi bosses say that they're still working on figuring out where to transplant to -- many cities out east are good candidates for Audi, making an East Coast landing a solid bet.

[Source: Automotive News]

Category: Trends, Etc., Audi, Volkswagen

Tags: audi, bmw, east coast, EastCoast, mercedes, relocating, volkswagen

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Tom in Boston

Joey (Kev) => Don't waste peoples time on here if you can't take the heat. Your one source is "better" than my two sources? How ridiculous you sound. Open up your mind, the European manufacturers aren't recovering from the Asian superior car manufacturing as fast as the U.S. manufacturers, simple and plain.

April 28 2006 at 11:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Tom in Boston

Dr. Woo => It's only stupid to you. It's still rebadging to share drivetrain/chasis parts and put a different carriage/fascia on a car. Oh, stretching a platform isn't rebadging? haha...you are just stubborn and brand blind, arguing against GM blindly. European models have built on similar platforms for decades. Little countries cannot afford to generate all new chasis. The Alfa/Volvo/Opel/Fiat/Saab platforms of past are examples. GM did not invent rebadging, you're a fool.

April 28 2006 at 11:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dr. Woo

Tom Design: "Get a reality check! The Audi TT is the Jetta and the Audi A4 underneath. These are the bread and butter high volume cars for VW and Audi. Of course, the A3 too. But rebadging means what's UNDERNEATH...you build a differently styled carriage (body) and use the same chasis and drivetrain. So they won't "resemble", right...the Jetta doesn't "look" like the A4 or TT, but it is the same rebadged mechanicals. That is what people bitch about with GM, and all car makers do it, especially cars that are high volume sellers."

Tom, Tom, Tom. Why am I here again to entertain this lunacy? Because I feel that you should know why you're wrong, despite your steadfast refusal to acknowledge this fact.

The Audi A4 rides on the B platform. The last VW to ride on the B platform was the previous-generation Passat, and it was a stretched, reworked B platform that shared little with Audi's version. Now, the B platform is exclusively Audi, the new Passat riding on a wild variation of the A platform. The Jetta and A4 share nothing and have never shared anything, except maybe a window switch or a trunk mat.

If your definition of "rebadging" is just using the same platform, then your and my definitions are very, very different. That's not rebadging, I'm sorry. And you're right...every manufacturer does that, but again, it's not "rebadging."

Quick lesson in history. The term "rebadge" came from GM's blatant badge-engineering way back when we had cars like the Chevrolet Caprice and the Buick Roadmaster. The Pontiac Firebird and the Chevrolet Camaro. The Cadillac Cimarron, the Buick Skylark, the Chevrolet Cavalier, the Oldsmobile Firenza...

Need I go on?

And for the record, you can't tell me the Audi TT / VW Jetta (A platform) is the same kind of rebadging as the Pontiac Torrent / Chevy Equinox, or even the GMC Yukon / Chevy Tahoe. That's just stupid.

April 28 2006 at 9:37 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

joey

#Tom Design

You simply don't get it.

Consumer Report is a test of how people feel about a car. It involves the experiences of more than one year AND you have to take into consideration that somebody who pays 50000$ for a car expects something else from it then somebody who pays only 15000. It is highly subjective and says nothing about reliablity at all.

The ADAC real world test on the other side is based on 2 million actual road-side assistances to drivers in need that were conducted by ADAC's own repair-or-tow team in 2005. They have been doing this for years and consider cars with high sales volumes so as to not distort the results. The report shows that the German cars have improved very much in terms of reliability and surpassed the Japanese even though these improved too. The American-European makes (Ford, Opel) are sub-standard.

So please take in the information before posting!

April 28 2006 at 3:37 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Tom in Boston

Dr. Woo => Get a reality check! The Audi TT is the Jetta and the Audi A4 underneath. These are the bread and butter high volume cars for VW and Audi. Of course, the A3 too. But rebadging means what's UNDERNEATH...you build a differently styled carriage (body) and use the same chasis and drivetrain. So they won't "resemble", right...the Jetta doesn't "look" like the A4 or TT, but it is the same rebadged mechanicals. That is what people bitch about with GM, and all car makers do it, especially cars that are high volume sellers.

April 27 2006 at 10:56 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Tom in Boston

Joey (Kev) => Here's a few views on how poorly the European cars are doing, while the U.S. cars are improving towards Japanese standards:
Other than Porsche, a very limited, and expensive automobile manufacturer news is bad for European cars. The European automakers with "German brands BMW, Audi and Volkswagen also are in the bottom half of the reliability rankings:"
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2006-03-01-consumer-reports-reliability_x.ht
and the same bad news in this Autoblog posting:
http://www.autoblog.com/2005/06/30/long-term-durability-figures-for-2002-cars-are-in/
sad, but the Audi A4 did well as a unique car despite its Audi name, almost even with the Japanese!

April 27 2006 at 10:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dr. Woo

Tom Design: "This site goes on and on about GM rebadging as a negative thing. Audi is simply a VW re-badged."

Tom, you're just wrong here. There's nothing correct about your statement. You're just WRONG. Show me the VW which Audi re-badged to create the A6. How about the TT?

The only car in Audi's lineup that could even remotely resemble a rebadge is the A3, and by anyone's definition of "rebadge," it's not. You're off the mark here, Tom, and you really ought to research what you're saying.

Dan: "Here in the US, I believe the VWs are built in Mexico, if you see where I'm going with this. Europe may have very high build-standards, but Mexico does not."

This is incorrect as well. VW's manufacturing facility in Mexico has the exact same standards as the Wolfsburg plant in Germany.

Peter W.: "the GTI would be a great car if it were allowed to get the A3's specs... but it won't..."

What do you mean "the A3's specs?" The GTI is a far more engaging, dynamic, involving car than its A3 cousin. Do you mean the A3's interior? Its overall quality? Its sophistication? It's an Audi! It costs more because of these advantages.

April 27 2006 at 10:24 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

joey

#25 #18

here is a link (German)

http://www.adac.de/mitgliedschaft_leistungen/motorwelt/m_archiv/Pressemeldungen/ADAC-Pannenstatistik_2005.asp?ComponentID=145219&SourcePageID=20057&location=33

another one (bad google translation of an article about the report)

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.spiegel.de/auto/werkstatt/0,1518,353870,00.html&prev=/search%3Fq2BPannenstatistik2BGerman3D203Den3D3DN

Sorry Jason, but I don't see evidence for your claim. ADAC obviously does not compare European to American cars. And American-European cars (Ford of Europe, Opel/Vauxhall, Jaguar etc.) on average have more incidents per car than other German and Japanese vehicles.

Some of the results of the report:

The big news is that VW Polo, Smart, Opel Corsa, BMW Mini and A2 to name a few beat the Yaris, a complete turn-around since 2000 (note that ALL have improved considerably, Toyota down from 12,5 to 4,8 incidents per 1000 vehicles per year but VW Polo down from 24,3 to 3,6!)

Same in other categories:

Mercedes C is down from 25,8 incidents per 1000 cars in 2000 to 2,6 in 2005, the rivalling Toyota Avensis is down from 17,2 to 5,9. BMW 3, Audi4, VW Passat all do better, Ford Mondeo (8,8) and Opel Vectra (6.6) are worse.

In the compact class, VW Golf beats the Toyota Corolla (Camry), down from 22.9 to 6.0 against Toyota's 7.7 (down from 19.7). A3, Opel Astra, even Seat Toledo do better, only Ford Focus C-Max is worse (11.6).

Other notable results are the VW Transporter - down from 32.1 in 2000 to 1.4 in 2005

A6 is down from 42.3 to 4.9, Mercedes E from 55.5 in 2000 (!) to 6.8

BMW X5 is on 2.3, Toyota Rav4 on 3.7

4 categories are taken by German cars vs. 3 taken by Japanese. ALL have improved massively since 2000, which is the best news imo.

One thing you need to consider - Lexus is not in the report because of low sales volume (under 10000 a year it seems).

April 27 2006 at 7:35 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Tom in Boston

I researched the A8 aluminum lightweight vs. the Phaeton steel heavyweight and found a 906 pound difference, that's almost half a ton! But, the idea that aluminum made the A8 light isn't really accurate. It weighs 4288 pounds! Look at this comparison with the all steel Buick Lucerne CXS ($34k), pretty much the same dimensions as the two ($65k-plus) Germans. The Buick weighs in 275 pounds less than the all aluminum A8. Go figure?

http://autos.msn.com/research/compare/default.aspx?c=0&n=3&i=0&tb=0&ph1=t0&ph2=t0&dt=1&v=t101793&v=t101585&v=t101829

April 27 2006 at 12:10 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jason in boston

Joey (Kev) => The European made cars (including all German) are way below the U.S. cars who are just below the Asian cars...in both quality & reliability results from two research companies. The only European car that was near the Japanese, above the U.S.,is the Audi A4. All other Audis and all other German cars were well below the U.S. made cars. The Germans are not recovering as fast as the U.S. manufacturers in build quality levels set by the Asians. Maybe in a few years the European cars will get with it, but this isn't a quick fix, as you can imagine. But if U.S. cars are almost nudging the Asian built for quality, the Germans won't be too far behind, maybe 2-5 years.

April 26 2006 at 11:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply