A day after Ford’s attempt to abscond with Volkswagen’s thunder, the boys in Wolfsburg delivered just the right antidote: Forget the single brand modern math. Stop moving countries around the map. Volkswagen Group’s worldwide deliveries grew 24.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010, says Europe’s (still) largest auto maker in a press release. The positive trend that lifted global automotive markets by 19.4 percent should not remain unnoted. Volkswagen is outperforming the market, and that means gaining market share.
And where does that first quarter growth come from? You guessed it:
The Volkswagen Group broke a new record in China, with first-quarter sales of 457,300 (+60.9 percent) units. (Must do better, VW. China grew 71.8 percent in the first quarter.)
The Asia-Pacific is up 58.9 percent.
South America up 13.4 percent.
USA, up 37.2 percent.
Europe, up 13.5 percent.
As far as brands go. Volkswagen Passenger Cars are up 27 percent with 1.11m sold in the first quarter.
Audi sold 264,100 (+25.9 percent) vehicles worldwide, the strongest first-quarter performance in the company’s history.
Škoda delivered 178,900 (+25.0 percent) units worldwide.
SEAT is back from the dead. They delivered 88,300 (+15.1 percent) vehicles to customers worldwide in the first quarter.
Done deal, I’m opening a VW only repair shop tomorrow. VW reliability and dealer experience means Cha Ching!
I don’t know why you are so concerned about Ford’s comment considering they did say “brand” and clearly specified the regions. What were they supposed to say? “WE ARE BEHIND VW AS ALWAYS, but still good!!!” ?
This is Thetruthaboutcars. My initials are BS. Our mission is to ferret out bullshit.
Ah yes, the power of new markets. I’m guessing people in China do not have much VW history to look back on….unlike North America.
Then again, it may not matter. I owned TWO MK4 VW’s with all the typical problems – and what do I own now? An MKV GTI. I guess I’m just a sucker for VW problems. Still, I like the cars, when they aren’t broken.
-ted
How do you like your dealer?
Is VAG still squeezing the US dealers, and passing the pain on to you?
Zerofoo: Not quite as long as the U.S., but more than a quarter of a century. VW brought the first mass produced joint venture car to China.
Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: My VW dealer has noticeably improved since my MKIV ownership. At the time, the dealer was in the same building as a Mazda dealership. Now the dealer has a separate facility and the service has been great.
Whatever VW did to dealers in NA, it worked. They have treated me well, and if my GTI continues to be reliable, I’ll probably buy a Passat for my wife.
For all their past problems, VWs still put a simile on my face when I drive them.
An interesting fact is that Volkswagen group have overtaken Ford and reached No. 1 in sales in the U.K.(1st Quarter of 2010)
This ends 35 years of Ford being No.1 in the U.K.market, the only large market where they were No.1
I think Fords sales claims recently are partly a smokescreen to detract from this.
That number is the result of “creative accounting.”
They own 50% of the JV and yet they count 100% of the sales. If we add the reported sales of Chinese car makers such as SAIC to the global auto sales, then we will have many more cars sold than produced, because all JV sales will be counted twice.
I mean, Ford owned 34% of Mazda for a long while, did Ford actually count the Mazda sales as Ford sales?
I think they did, on occasion. I do know they not only counted post-acquisition sales of Mazda, Volvo et al for their 100-year sales figure but they also retroactively counted sales from before any of those companies were part of the Ford empire.
What do you think GM does?
They only own 49% of GM China and count all cars as theirs.
What’s worse, they count more than a million Wuling vans, made by joint venture in which they have only a 34 percent share, as GM. Wouldn’t it be for Wuling, then the 1.8 million GMs made in China would be less than 800,000 – made by a minority-owned JV.
I’ve long since argued that if people want to play this game, then play it fair.
The size of the stake is proportional to how many cars you can claim. Therefore if you own a 20% stake in a company which makes 1 million cars, then you count 200,000 cars towards your figure. It’s the only way to make sense of these joint ventures.
However, no-one will ever make this industry standard as it will actually reveal the TRUE size of companies and possibly wipe millions of pounds off their share value.
Cammy, that scheme makes perfect sense. But I’m not sure I agree with your reasoning as to why it will never happen. If the average commenter on TTAC knows that production is counted this way, then surely any investor worth his/her salt knows it too.
If investors were half as savvy as you imply, then things like the tech bubble, housing bubble and oil bubble would never happen. That just simply isn’t true. For goodness sake, look at the banking crisis. Loads of people working in banking, finally had to admit, then didn’t have a sodding clue what they were doing and that it largely guess work.
Just look at how GM tried to hold onto their “world’s largest” title using mathematical trickery.
My point is that in this case it doesn’t require much savvy at all. From a financial perspective, the automobile industry is quite mature and very well understood–at least enough for anyone to understand what the production numbers (which are published for all to see) mean. Anyone with half a brain can look at the actual numbers instead of just taking the marketing claims at face value.
By way of contrast, during the tech bubble, many investors really had no clue what they were buying, but (I suspect) didn’t want to be left out. Many of the companies with soaring stock prices had no real business plans beyond “spend a bunch of money to build something; then lots of customers will come, and we’ll figure out a way to make money off them.” Something similar can probably be said about the banking crisis (particularly with all the hopelessly complex financial derivative products being offered), but I don’t know much about that industry.
Worldwide production statistics are kept by OICA, the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers. To change the way those statistics are being kept, the members have to request it, with a majority. The members are automobile manufacturers. Nuff said.