Volkswagen has revealed that it plans to take on the newly minted global leader Toyota and become the world's largest carmaker by 2015. The ambitious goal was confirmed by Michael Kern, head of sales and marketing for the Volkswagen brand, who said they aim to beat Toyota on both vehicle sales and profitability.
According to Kern, VW plans to bring 12 new models to its lineup in the next three years, a level unprecedented by any large carmaker. Kern was also quoted in German magazine Auto Motor Und Sport as saying "we are going to expand our presence in the United States, Russia, India and other markets."
One of the previews at the recent Frankfurt Motor Show was the up! minicar concept. Small cars are expected to be the Next Big Thing as the Indian and Chinese middle class mobilize.
As of 2007, however, Volkswagen is far behind Toyota and GM in sales. The company will manage to sell just over 6 million cars compared to more than 9 million for the two leaders.
[Source: The Auto Channel]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
sw @ Sep 24th 2007 1:38PM
Let me be the first to say.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
This has to be an attempt at a joke by VW
paul34 @ Sep 24th 2007 1:40PM
I was just about to post this same thing. May I join you?
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAH
MKIV @ Sep 24th 2007 1:59PM
Oh hell, let me get in on the entertainmet as well..
BWWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAHHHHAHA
catch breath
Ahhhhhhahahaaaaahhahahahaha
blogged to death @ Sep 24th 2007 2:54PM
Way to set such a high or almost impossible to reach goal. Will this include the turnaround in US market that has bombed on them. They did move to DC as their new HQ but that won't help much except raise expenses. It's much cheaper to live in MI than DC - plus they'll have to raise and pay standard of living salaries for the DC workforce.
But...my first reaction was BWAAAAAAHHHHHHHAAAAAA
Guenther @ Sep 24th 2007 2:58PM
No disrespect to a certain civil rights pioneer, but...
....I HAVE A DREAM!!!!!
Drewboy @ Sep 24th 2007 3:42PM
Yeah I laughed my @$$ off at this too. Nice joke, VW!
Don @ Sep 24th 2007 10:16PM
I'll make three: Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!
Chase @ Sep 25th 2007 8:44AM
What's the biggest problem with VW in America? Everyone says reliability. Some say price, but I doubt those people have seriously considered a VW enough to value the standard features and drive-ability.
People drive a lot less in the rest of the world as compared to America. I visit France often, and everyone walks to the market to buy food, or they take a train to go to the mall. Its not uncommon to find a 20-year-old car that has less than 100,000 miles on the tach. It is very common to find 10 year old cars with less than 60k miles. In markets like France, where you drive less, reliability is much less of an issue as driving dynamics, style, and utility. VW offers excellent cars for these criteria. Thats why they are as huge as they are without much presence in USA or Japan (they are what, the 5th largest automaker in the world, but one of the very smallest in the US?).
That said, people drive even less in developing nations. That and the fact that VW is one of the top makers in developing nations, and the fact that by 2015 China alone will buy more cars than the US makes that this proposition a lot more believable. VW is a huge deal in the rest of the world, and I think they are banking on the fact that the rest of the world will soon mean a whole lot more.
Sandeep @ Sep 24th 2007 1:38PM
Will take a lot to displace Toyota or GM. You think they're strong in the NA market? Try going to a developing country like India- Skoda (VW's 'affordable' brand) is considered expensive.
VW needs to figure out a way to get reliability up and production costs way way down. There's no way they could sell any of their current models in the developing countries, and it will take a significant drop for them to become competitive (not just a niche) in the US.
Val @ Sep 24th 2007 4:52PM
Maybe that's where the 12 new models come in...
sw @ Sep 24th 2007 6:15PM
That's akin to a lightweight boxer working out a bit and telling Mike Tyson (when he was in ideal fighting shape) that he's going to knock Mike Tyson out.
Castle @ Sep 24th 2007 6:24PM
VW. Little advice. . .
First beat Ford, then GM, then Toyota. . .
Max @ Sep 24th 2007 1:38PM
I have three words for VW.....quality not quantity.
After the MkIV disaster, VW is still wondering why sales are down in the US. Its because people realized you build crappy cars!
Lisa Beamer @ Sep 24th 2007 1:39PM
I think they should work out their quality issues first...
If you build a good product, growth will take care of itself.
If BMW had a plain-vanilla brand, I could see them pulling this off. Their management is really in the zone right now.
lalaland @ Sep 24th 2007 1:47PM
With the euro at $1.40, nice try selling Corollas (kaffkaff) Jettas for $30,000 in America, not to mention Accords (kaffkaff) Passats for $40,000. You think Americans are going to buy that stuff?
And where are they going to BUILD all this new inventory, at plants in Germany where the labor unions have an even worse stranglehold than the UAW in Detroit?
Delusional thinking. Somewhere I think all this is being masterminded by Herr Doktor Gruppenfuhrer Piech in a last gasp grasp for automotive immortality before he becomes yet another historical footnote.
Idiots.
MH @ Sep 24th 2007 2:48PM
Historical footnote? He and his family is in the process of taking over the whole company. Pretty big footnote if you ask me.
Val @ Sep 24th 2007 4:56PM
Where??? Uh, India and China, for starters. US is a lost market for them, i think, best they can hope is stop losing so much money.
RWD fan @ Sep 24th 2007 1:51PM
Overpriced and unreliable. That's the way to bump Toyota out of first place.
Yeah, good luck with that VW.
Quattroporte @ Sep 24th 2007 1:52PM
When automakers want to become #1, whether it be in their segment or overall, their products seem to go downhill in quality. I'm not saying that will happen to VW, but Toyotas aren't what they used to be. The Jaguar X-Type is another example of wanting big sales numbers. And, don't forget about Mercedes-Benz's recent issues.
psarhjinian @ Sep 24th 2007 3:49PM
Of course VW's quality won't drop. Of course, that's because it'd be very hard to go much lower. I mean, yes, there's Jaguar and Land Rover, but I think VW would actually have to actively try to do worse.
Toyota's problems (which are few, and those that exist are greatly exaggerated) are the result of decontenting to cope with a strong yen in the late 90s and teething problems at new factories. This can (and is) being fixed.
VW's problems are endemic to European automotive engineering: you cannot design machines for technical ability and then worry about QA down the line. You design for quality first and see what you can do from there. This is why Toyota is very slightly behind the performance levels set by the Germans, but way ahead on the quality curve.