Here’s a question that will determine your reaction to the editorial below. What does a car company need more: a strong lineup of volume offerings, or a few niche products that exist in this world, but will likely never cross your path?
If you chose the second answer, you may want to stop reading.
News of the indefinite delay of exciting products like the Nissan IDx concept and the Infiniti Q50 Eau Rouge prompted the usual wailing/gnashing of teeth from Jalopnik.
In an editorial titled “Nissan Steps Back From IDx And Q50 Eau Rouge To Focus On Boring Junk”, Patrick George suggests that Nissan’s decision to focus on the core products in their lineup is a bad one.
“Ugh. Basically, their plan is to shy away from compelling products and double-down on boring ones to chase volume. That’s awesome. That’s what the world needs. It’s worked so well for Volkswagen, hasn’t it?”
We can go right past the long-beaten dead horse of “enthusiast cars don’t make money, nobody buys them, boring sells”, pass go, collect $200 and hone in on the Volkswagen analogy. It is wildly inaccurate.
As it stands now, Nissan is on a tear. The Altima, Versa and Rogue are strong sellers, at or near the top of their respective segments. The Juke isn’t a particularly strong seller in the United States, but it’s a global success. Even the Sentra, which is a particularly dreadful car to drive, does well. Nissan has a large dealer network, a long, successful history of manufacturing cars in the United States and a full lineup of passenger cars, trucks, SUVs, CUVs, commercial vehicles and sports cars.
Volkswagen has…none of that. Its history in the United States consists of the Beetle, Microbus and then a long history of mis-steps and an utter failure to understand the American marketplace, let alone even market vehicles that Americans want. The prior generation of Euro-oriented Passats and Jettas didn’t move the needle with the American public. Neither did this generation of Americanized cars. That doesn’t mean that Nissan’s approach to future strategy is *anything* like VW.
Not that it’s even about America. Lost in all the pandering and faux indignation is the fact that this is a globally-focused move, one that will help Nissan (and Renault and Dacia and Samsung) compete with VW in world markets, where Volkswagen is supposedly hoarding its best products. While VW is stumbling in the dark, Nissan is busy working on their own modular platforms, and they’re not keeping them away from North America either. The new CMF platform that underpins the Rogue is the same as the European X-Trail. Expect more of that in the future.
Aside from the lore of the Z-Car, the SE-Rs and the 240SXs, Nissan had a tumultuous experience in the 1990s, prior to Carlos Ghosn’s ascension to the throne. Despite being one of the more interesting Japanese performance car manufacturers, the company was a mess financially and organizationally. Ghosn turned the company around, at the expense of a lot of the interesting product that we fetishize. Not pursuing the I is a good move – one look at how well the Scion FR-S is selling and you’d have to be delusional (or willfully ignorant in the pursuit of pageview clicks) to suggest a similar model for Nissan. As for the Q50 Eau Rouge? The lack of Sebastian Vettel and any coherent direction for Infiniti likely had more to do with that decision than anything else.
By focusing on the volume product, Nissan is sticking with what works – and perhaps, it will get better in terms of driving dynamics, styling, interior quality and the other metrics we value. At least we’ll see a good mid-size truck out of it.
And yet, VW is the more successful company, despite their relative lack of success in the US. The US is just A market these days, not THE market. Nissan nearly went under and had to be saved by *Renault* of all companies.
Not that VW really concentrates all that much more on niche products anyway. The Golf is the centerpiece of their success, it doesn’t get much more mainstream globally than that.
VW DID have success with the cheaper Americanized cars for a while. Both the Jetta and the Passat sold better than their predecessors when they debuted. The issue is that VW read the tea leaves wrong, introducing cheaper product just as those Americans who were still buying new cars started buying more upmarket, more expensive versions of even mainstream cars. They have certainly missed the bus on CUVs, though I personally really like the Tiguan.
I think VW could have really dominated sustainably if they had combined their decontenting with some style. Neither the Jetta nor Passat are good looking cars in their segments. I’d rather do a Kia Optima than either to be honest.
See, I think the VWs are quite handsome (much as I think Audis look better than Mercedes and compete nicely with BMW, lately) … but I don’t trust them to do things like “run for more than a few years” or “not catch on fire”.
The US is the second largest auto market in the world.
VW is missing its own US sales targets.
I realize that you feel obligated to justify everything done by the Germans, but this aspect of its business is obviously not going well for VW.
He did this the other day too on whatever that other VW article was.
I don’t disagree with you that the US is a disaster for VW. I just don’t feel that they really CARE, no matter how much they say they do.
The US may be the 2nd largest market in the world, but an awful lot of that market consists of product that VW does not, and will never build.
Doesn’t matter to me ultimately, I’m not in the market for a VW. Or a Nissan for that matter. But the constant doom and gloom about a company that is currently #2 in the world with a very good chance of being #1 in a year or two baffles me. Why do we not see doom and gloom articles on Toyota? They are just about as bad off in Europe as VW is here.
Because Toyota doesn’t act like VW, and because the US isn’t Europe.
US consumers will buy the hot new thing no matter where it comes from, and VW keeps telling us about the million cars a year they’re going to sell here.
So if Toyota said they would be selling 2 million cars a year in Europe then didn’t, we would see the same sort of hand-wringing about them? Seems unlikely.
US consumers pretty much just buy the same dull things year after year after year. The hot new things barely move the needle with rare exception.
They have a US sales objective for the brand of 800k units by 2018. They are nowhere close to meeting that.
They are on record as admitting that they don’t understand the US market.
A year ago, all four US VW sales managers were replaced, as 2013 was also a lousy year. http://www.autonews.com/article/20140129/OEM02/140129744/vw-brings-back-barnes-as-u-s-sales-chief
Of course they care.
They are not acting like they care, regardless of what they say. Therefor, my call is they don’t really care. We can agree to disagree on this.
They got rid of their entire US sales team.
They would have to more than double their sales in four years to hit their target.
And again: They got rid of their entire US sales team.
By the way, they got rid of their entire US sales team.
Do you really need to have that explained to you?
They aren’t doing anything about the product. Which is a *much* bigger issue than the sales team. The most talented sales folks in the world can’t sell product that is the wrong product for the market and mostly out of date. The most talented marketeers in the world are not going to get the average American interested in VWs premier product, which is the Golf, or a Passat that has not been updated in about 3-4 too many years. The US Passat and Jetta were decent efforts for when they were introduced, but the market has moved and VW has not been updating them. The new engines this year are a half-hearted start at least.
How is this lost on you? You are doing your usual target fixation thing on one aspect of the situation.
Goals weren’t met.
Heads rolled.
What that means is fairly obvious.
But whatever, humor me: Pray tell, what exactly would VW management have to do to demonstrate to your satisfaction that “they care”?
Spend the money on appropriate, US-specific product. Small, medium, and large CUVs, much as I hate the damned things, they sell like hotcakes here. A new competitive Passat. A new Jetta. Some decent marketing. Bring back the old 10year/100K warranty they once had. Then have some interesting niche cars around these core products. Build that retro minivan they teased to build some excitement. Then they might actually pull off 800K sales a year here. Or don’t, and take whatever profit they are currently making and shut up about the whole thing, they are likely to be #1 in the world soon regardless. The later approach is easier, and might actually be a bigger money maker than messing around with this screwy insular market.
As for the sales dudes – sacrificial lambs. Ze head Germans said “you vill sell 800K cars”, and they had not a snowballs chance of doing so with what they had to sell, so their heads rolled. Corporate BS at its finest.
The fact that *I* like most of VWs current product means they are well and truly screwed in the US, because I freely admit that my taste in automobiles is at 90 degrees to the average Americans. The average American wants a Camry or a full-size pickup truck, and VW doesn’t make either one.
“They aren’t doing anything about the product.”
VW not only designed a special Passat specifically for the US market, but the company also built a factory in the US in order to assemble it.
The original intent of the Jetta was to provide Americans with a Golf with a trunk.
VW is trying, it just isn’t particularly good at it. As noted, VW doesn’t really understand the US market. Even the company knows that it is doing poorly, it just doesn’t know what to do about it.
“The issue is that VW read the tea leaves wrong, introducing cheaper product just as those Americans who were still buying new cars started buying more upmarket, more expensive versions of even mainstream cars.”
VW needs to, frankly, suck it up and realize the Americans:
* Won’t pay European prices for European sized cars.
* Won’t accept last-generation (or two-or-more generations ago) warmed over offerings like their non-European markets
* Want something very reliable.
Basically, they need to learn to better cars for less money and live with it.
Toyota and Honda learned all this a couple decades back and make very good products; VW still seems to think they can get Americans to march to their tune, which is at least a little better then when they thought their customers were ungrateful.
I think that they understand the pricing issue. It’s the reliability that they haven’t grasped.
“I think that they understand the pricing issue.”
No, I don’t think they have.
They’re not value-competitive with the Golf or Tiguan, barely so with the Jetta and Passat (both get expensive quickly) and not even close on the Touareg.
The Golf is an afterthought for the US. The Jetta is the volume car here; the pricing is reasonable, there are frequent lease deals, and the sales volumes are respectable. (The sedan and wagon combined were at about 160k units last year.)
The Jetta alone is almost half of VW’s US volume. It doesn’t seem to cast much of a glow on the rest of the cars. The Beetle previously served as a halo — the New Beetle saved the US business from failure — but that isn’t helping them anymore.
160k combined puts the Jetta in a distant 7th place in its segment, though. And four of the six brands that outsell the Jetta in its segment do more volume in midsizes than in compacts.
The Fusion, Civic, Accord, Altima, and Camry each outsell all VW passenger cars combined.
They can make money on 160k units. Not everyone can lead the segment.
They have a lot of dogs, but the Jetta is an exception.
“It’s the reliability that they haven’t grasped.”
As the jilted former owner of a 2001 Jetta, I agree emphatically!
I want to be a VW fanboy, but their product ret we down repeatedly and expensively.
The 10 year / 100k mile warranty is about what it would take to get me back.
The 1978 Chrysler Cordoba had terrible handling, so I really wouldn’t consider any Chrysler product, either.
In 2001, you’d have been telling him he was ridiculous not to consider a VW because of the Golf that fell apart on him in 1989.
Except they have been consistently unreliable ever since they switched from air to water cooling. They are still unreliable. As such, it’s logical to assume that they MAY never be reliable. My 2013 GTI is a piece of junk; it’s been towed 3 times in less than 60k miles for things like bad software, water pumps, intake manifolds, and random stalling while cruising. I’ll pass, thanks. I certainly won’t take that chance again.
Internet auto enthusiats- and particularly the adolescent doe-eyed highly opinionated Chris Harris fellating archetypal Jalop/opponaut- seem to continually forget that auto makers are in the business of selling cars.
For anyone who needs a reminder of what unyielding purity and devotion to enthusiasts get you- do a quick search for a 2015 Lotus for sale in the US and report back to me :)
Personally I think the market today has more enthusiast offerings than ever. Nissan soldiers on with the 370Z, which is the best Z it’s ever made this side of the Z32. Mustang is legit awesome. BMW 2 is legit awesome. Miata is still pure. Camaro is awesome if you are OK with its letterbox view out. A fcking Camry V6 will keep up with or walk away from my 350Z in a straight line. What more do you want?
Not to mention the smorgashboard of awesome cars over the last 2 decades means you have your pick of the litter. Even more so if you are willing to get your hands dirty. V6 MR2? Why not? LSx all the things? Go for it. R32 GT-R? You can import them now.
So Nissan’s not making an IDx? Who really cares? You weren’t going to buy one anyway. Just get the 240SX you wish it could have been and would have been disappointed it never lived up to… and save everyone the time and keystrokes. Internet auto enthusiasts are a particularly whiny bunch… I am loving this automotive era. Barring expensive gas I don’t think ANYONE has had it better.
I’d be happy if Nissan made a 4DSC Maxima pre-1995 again
That was a great car! Rode so nice, AND handled well! Especially nice in pearl white with directional alloys.
British racing green, saddle leather interior and BBS wheels. Wanted mine to look as close to an E34 as I could get it
I’m pretty sure the J/I/Q were available in that configuration from factory.
Amen. I had two of them (an ’89 SE and a ’93 SE) and they were the best products Nissan ever made. I also had a ’95 and a ’97 which had better motors (the VQ) but were poorer cars.
Yea the VQ was a motor screaming for a chassis. I called the 4th gen Maxima the Japanese Bonneville. Much better interior though
If you don’t mind the Infiniti badge, the G37 was the modern day 4DSC (literally), and cost similar money to an inflation-adjusted early 90s Maxima.
So of course, they softened it.
Reliability and the stinging costs of German car repair is VW’s biggest issue for the US market. That can’t be fixed without altering the magic formula VW has for the rest of the world. It’s just not worth chasing. Or can it be fixed at all?
VW could match Hyundai’s warranty. Protect customers from repair expenses and more American customers will buy Volkswagens.
George B, that makes sense, but I don’t think VW has the confidence in their own products to match Hyundai’s warranty.
My guess is that VW would go broke in that match up.
For a year or two back in the 90’s VW did have a 100K warranty though I think it was powertrain only. I’m sure they did it as an attempt to convince people that they were reliable but since they dropped after a short time I’m guessing it was killing them financially.
NISSAN’s strength is it’s presence in South America, the Caribbean and other third world countries who’s people manage to immigrate to America. They buy Nissan and Infiniti like they’re “awesome” or something.
Volkswagen has a very distinct group of buyers. People who want that “German badge” but really can’t afford it – or those who think manuals are the most awesome things since sliced turkey…so they settle…until they manage to make that “Audi money”.
It’s really amazing that they gave you the green light to write reviews here at one point in time.
Counterpoints are ugly sometimes, but someone’s got to do it.
I see it as geography, too. Like the Treaty of Tordesillas divvied up the known world between Spain and Portugal, I’m guessing someone pretty high up in Truman’s admin did the same with Japan and Germany.
Or maybe it was the grey eminence of Eleanor?
Japan and Germany did the same. Had things turned out different everyone west of the Mississippi would be speaking Japanese and everyone east would be speaking German
… and there’d probably no internet or color TV, what a world
But there’d be trains and they’d effing well run on time!
Check out the Amazon pilot “Man in the High Castle” based upon the Philip K. Dick novel of an alternate history in which that happened.
Thanks, Bunkie, I will. I’m a Kindle-holic and all my fave Sci-Fi writers are dead or dying.
I saw that on Amazon UK briefly but I didn’t check into it, is that a new show or movie?
Personally I thought BTSR’s reviews were quite good
Thank You^
I’m an acquired taste.
That’s what my girlfriend said anyway…
As long as I can buy off-lease ’12 Jettas for $9800 and retail them for $12,5, I’m happy. You end up with a superior product vis-a-vis a tincan Altima.
I see them as a Hitler/Stalin argument but why is the Jetta superior to Altima? Strictly from the dealer POV or from a product to value one?
In bulletpoint format:
1) You pay another $1-2k for the privilege of an Altima 2.5S.
2) A comperable Jetta 2.5SE Convenience is better-equipped than an Altima 2.5S.
3) Jettas are more ‘right-sized’ versus an Altima and have a more ‘femenine’ appeal in their styling (7 of the last 8 MK6 Jettas I’ve sold have been to women, the other being to a young man who traded in a Mk3 Jetta).
4) VW still has some brand cache in the pre-owned market versus Nissan. I can sell a Jetta over an Altima based on its ‘European engineering’, build quality, ride quality, and off-the-line power with the 2.5 I5.
5) MK6 Jetta build quality is far and away better than a comparable Altima, at least for a used one. The doors aren’t ‘tinny,’ and the upholstery issues of the A5 generation seem to have been corrected.
6) MK6 Jettas wear better than comperable Altimas. Maybe its who VW leases to new, but the average Jetta I get needs far less in reconditioning versus a comparable Altima, usually tires and a good detail. Most Jettas I get have all keys, all mats, those stupid LEGO block cargo organizers, owner’s portfolio, sometimes a window sticker, and that type of stuff that appeals to someone looking at a ‘new car alternative’ car. Contrast that to a typical Altima which is beat, beat up, and robbed – usually has one mangled keyfob, no mats, odors, no books, and worn HVAC/audio controls. Again, purely anecdoatal, but the average Jetta leasee seems to be a more concientious person than the avearge Altima leasee. This matters to me because – PROTIP – the most universally exciting thing you can do for a used car buyer is give them a second key. Men, women, black, white, Asian, latino, gay, straight, 18 year-old girls to 75 year-old retired Marines. Doesn’t matter. Surprising them with an extra key makes. Their. Week. Period.
7) Not Altima-specific, but if you happen to incorrectly land a row-your-own Jetta, you can still probably retail it. Buy a manual Corolla/Sentra/etc? Have fun looking at it forever. Or worse, having to demo it yourself.
Great feedback, thanks for the insider info. I agree an extra key makes my day/week/year especially with how ridiculous keys & fobs are these days. I also never thought I’d see the day where a VW US product outshines one from the Japanese Big Three in the aftermarket.
Flybrian, you better stop spreading all that real world experience before you pop the VW hate pimple. Don’t you know, these people are internet PROS, and just because the overwhelming majority have never owned a veedub, they know they are junk because that’s what has been reported ON THE INTERNET. Now go back and sit in your dealer lot corner in the real world and stop telling the truth.
Woah there. Flybrian is right about retailing slightly used 2.5L Jettas, but that doesn’t validate the pure undiluted sh1t that VW has foisted upon the market for a long time.
There’s a damned good reason that they have some of the highest warranty costs in the business, and it’s not because they’re generous. Their sales problem in the US probably has likely to do with the word spreading.
Flybrian is speaking from the perspective of a dealer, who sells to people who don’t know any better and see ANY euro car as something special. Also, there’s probably a reason why 9 out of 10 buyers are young women (read: uninformed about the workings of automotive engineering). Ask that same rube who bought one 3-4 years ago if they still think it was a good idea. Or better yet, try this: look on CL and see how many running 10-15 year old VWs your search returns compared to even say, a SAAB of the same vintage. Nuff said.
I think you need to go back and re read his post since apparently you didn’t comprehend it the first time around.
A car company needs a strong lineup of volume offerings, but I want niche products. I’m dreading the day Lotus annouces a SUV, but I know they need something mainstream to prosper.
Yea yea but it´s so dificult fail 1 more time nissan?
Idx concept…don´t remember any concept car lately with the people so interest, and so real to manufacture. Just with the FWD version is OK. You can, came on…
Check the reaction of the new NSX. It´s OK, finally have a date to sale, but it´s the halo car? Get the people making a line to buy?
Now, any Nissan concept with a good reaction lately? Only Idx.
The other Mehh cars of the line can sale in good numbers, but nobody will remember in 20 years.
Everybody remember the Lincoln Continental Concept car of 2002 right?
Reactions don’t mean crap. The internet has provided an echo chamber for folks nowhere near in the market for certain cars being able to voice their interest. Nissan is smart not to listen to internet chatter.
>> Now, any Nissan concept with a good reaction lately? Only Idx.
What about the R36?
“the company was a mess financially and organizationally”
I was thinking it was the organizational bit which lead to the financial bit. Wasn’t this something about the management/ownership’s refusal to adapt and move with the times? (Something in my memory tied it to a similarity with Packard in that regard.)
Is there a documentary about this somewhere? I love watching financial type industry documentaries.
Nissan’s problems in the ’90s boil down to trying to match Toyota in *every* market segment, without having the full advantages of Toyota’s kaizen production system to pay for it. On top of that, “Nissan” had never completely merged the old Prince organization, so it was almost two companies in one suit with very different goals.
Wasn’t the Eau Rouge a Johan de Nysschen project?
Doesn’t Infiniti have a bigger problem (that no one knows which car is which because they’re all Q-something, brand equity in the toilet) then releasing some piece of supercar unobtainium that people will just skip past because it doesn’t have “M” or “AMG” in the decklid?
“Eau Rouge”
Who thought “a watery solution (as of perfume)” from a bad guy was an attractive concept?
The same guy who thinks that renaming a product and moving an HQ works every single time.
de Nysschen is fantastically out of touch. He got lucky at Audi—he was handed the single strongest refreshed model lineup in automobile history—and seems to think that he has the Midas touch.
After I submitted that I realized there’s a difference between rouge and rogue. Stupid French.
It is named after a famous segment of a famous racetrack, which I am sure you know, as one of the “B&B”.
Eau Rouge, from Wiki:
“one of the best-known corners in Formula One race tracks in the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps motor racing circuit, at the point where the track crosses it for the first time.”
Oh! The Spa-Francorchamps Eau Rouge! Well, of course. It’s The War, deon’t you kneow? Bloody Jerry guns… rattled one’s memories.
No, I beg you, please don’t go there! This thread has been, so far, devoid of the dreaded anti-‘C’ rant by you-know-who…
How to be a CEO in two easy steps:
1. Create a narrative that credits all positive results to your foresight and planning and blames all negative results on external factors like “government policy”, or the “soft economy” (things that lay-people accept as too big to challenge or change).
2. Repeat step 1.
VW does not get the US but still manages to sell a TON of auto’s in the world,yet part of VW must get the US because Audi does better than Infinity, Audi has a plan and has put in the effort and time to get it right for the most part, while the VW division really has not had a plan or the time to put it in action. And Corp VW does not seem to give a crap since they seem to make $$$ everywhere else. When they kept their European type of cars last gen Passet and jetta they did not really sell that well, when the cheapen them they did sell but has fallen off due to major competition, I think their reliability has been middle of the pack say the last 7 years or so, they need time to separate the bad VW’s from the decent to good ones. I have no reply to why the missed / passed on the whole CUV thing.
“yet part of VW must get the US because Audi does better than Infinity”
The luxury market is different. VW did a good job conveying to Americans that Audi is a luxury brand. What they need to do is stop trying to convince Americans that _Volkswagen_ is also a luxury brand.
Imagine if Toyota tried to get you to pay not-quite-Lexus money for every Toyota model. Think about how well that would work.
The problem for VW is that they don’t have SEAT or Skoda to slot in under VW in North America, but they’ve traditionally a) priced VWs as if they did, and b) allowed VWs to have luxury-car glitches that mass-market buyers won’t put up with.
Basically, they want VW to be Buick, which is silly when Buick doesn’t really sell in great numbers and GM has Chevrolet while VW has…. VW?
It’s so very simple: make VWs that are inexpensive to buy and even less expensive to own at every price point that Toyota manages to hit. That means, yes, they’ll need to make cars they’ve been perversely avoiding making, like a three-row crossover and/or minivan and stop making things that almost no one buys, like the Touareg, Phaeton and Beetle.
Or they can simply do nothing differently and the vast majority of us will keep right on ignoring them. I prefer that ’cause it’s less work for me come shopping time.
That’s pretty easy, just go to their site and see what’s there. It’s pretty much the same stuff that was there 5 years and more ago. Then I look at the one thing that slightly interests me the Touareg and see it’s $50K
I’ll come back in another 5 years and look again
I’m not the first to suggest it, but VW would be better off simply importing Skodas to the US with VW badges on them, and continue letting Audi sell the glammed-up Eurocheese.
I wasn’t even gonna reply until I saw this post. You nailed it. Nothing VW makes, except the CC, look ‘lux’. The Phaeton just looked/looks like a big Passat. For the money, there ought to be style AND reliability (although I see a lot of Jettas when I’m out on the road). They’ll probably never stop selling Beetles, but the Passat could just disappear. The equivalent would be Honda/Toyota/ selling bigger, more lux Accords/Camrys. They don’t do that! The closest parallel would be Toyota’s Avalon, but it LOOKS lux next to a Camry. Honda doesn’t even bother! Its’ Accord or if you want more, get an Acura.
“It’s worked so well for Volkswagen, hasn’t it?”
There’s a couple of problems with that statement. First, VW does still continue to offer more interesting alternatives than Nissan. Golf, GTI, and TDI Sportwagens are far more interesting than anything Nissan sells outside of the GT-R and Z. Even a 1.8-equipped Passats and Jettas are better to drive than Altimas and (especially) Sentras.
Second, when VW did “water down” their Passats and Jettas, they sold way more of them than their predecessors. Their current sales slide is not because they initially crafted these cars more towards Americans’ tastes. If they hadn’t watered them down, the sales would be even worse right now.
What is their current sales slide about then?
Aside from the Golf, they have no class leaders. And the Golf leads because it is in a class of its own (though the Mazda 3 may change that).
The Jetta and Passat look about 10 years old, and aside from the TDI versions offer no reasons not to look elsewhere.
Am I missing something? The market doesn’t seem to be. They decontented and cut prices, but then after a year or so people started to realize “affordable German” isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Easy there, I’m not claiming the current Passat and Jetta deserve to be top sellers, I’m arguing that VW making them more mainstream got them closer to that sales status than they’d been in some time. It was the right thing to do in this market. Unfortunately, so are rapid product updates, improvements, and content-for-money and they didn’t get that part right.
If VW kept selling the European Passat and kept the Jetta a Golf sedan here in 2012, I doubt they’d have seen nearly the sales uptick, temporary as it was.
@sportyaccordy: “What is their current sales slide about then?”
Two words: Old product. Most of their competitors have been redesigned since the Jetta and Passat were launched. We’ll have to wait and see how they do with the follow-on, and whether they have learned from the first-gen localized-product experience.
30 mile is right. The slide that we’re all hyperventilating about on the Jetta and Passat is more about those cars reaching the end of their 4-5 year product cycle. Those cars remain far more successful than their predecessors. I’d agree that their styling is starting to look too conservative (the ’15 Jetta is redesigned and basically is indistinguishable from the ’14.) On the other hand the US Passat has yet to go through it’s first redesign, so we’ll see how they treat it. If they keep things static there the car will be lucky to maintain it’s current volume.
Sportyaccordy: The Golf is a pretty representative car for a C class hatch. The Mazda3 and Focus are direct competitors for it, but we’re seeing the Golf in a positive light because it is the brand’s most important and well developed car, it is brand new, and because VW has massive volume on the model which allows them to be aggressive with powertrain options, build materials etc… I’d also say the 1.8T is a far better reason to look to them than the TDI, but that’s just me I guess.
It also seems odd to me that everyone is discussing those two cars as unreliable and problematic. I thought the Passat and Jetta were doing well in Consumer Reports surveys. I agree with the idea that VW has historically not gotten the US market, but these two cars are the worst possible example of that. Look to the Touareg, Eos and CC for case studies in market irrelevant, low volume, high cost of ownership vehicles. It’s funny to me that in these VW threads you’ll see people tear into the brand for not getting the US, while then exclaiming that all VW needs to do is make more CC like vehicles, or that the Touareg is perfect but too pricey. Literally none of that strikes me as actually being the case.
VW needs something like three new CUV/SUV’s, and it needs to shorten it’s redesign cycle intervals. I had thought this was all gone over in previous editorials and relatively settled. I would personally add that VW has a lot of work to do still on the service side of their dealer equation. My experience has been normal parts costs and reliability, but wildly unpredictable honesty levels from service and warranty managers. Some dealers are great, others are completely untrustworthy. I doubt this is a VW specific phenomenon, but with fewer dealers than their competitors it matter more for them.
In terms of sales, forget the X-Trail, the CMF platform underpins the Nissan Qashqai made in Sunderland UK, as well as our Rogue – same car except for 6 inches of wheelbase. Well over half a million of these two knocked out each year.
As an enthusiast, I have no interest whatsoever in any Nissan, or Infiniti since the Q50 G37 replacement debuted to a chorus of groans.
Which means the average dull plodder really likes them. Nissan sales ballooned 35% in Canada last year. “We came to look at the Micra, and left with a Rogue,” gushed a woman with two small kids and a smartphone. “Fred was so nice!” she gestured at the beaming salesman.
Different world from mine. Wouldn’t mind an S3 myself, but recent price increases due to the falling loonie mitigate against it.
I can’t understand how anyone thought the Eau Rouge would actually see the light of day as a production model. The GT-R is already a $100K automobile. The cost of a luxury 4 door version makes no sense in the current market. Nobody wants to pay M5+ money for a M3 sized car, no matter how fast it runs the Nurburgring. Then there was the whole absolute Frankenstein (read not remotely production ready) mechanical nature of the prototype that wasn’t using the same tranny as the GT-R.
The problem that I have personally with Nissan is that they used to be a “poor man’s BMW”. They made things a bit more exciting, 510, SE-R, Z cars, 240Sx, 4DSC Maxima just to name a few. Now they have nearly purged old Nissan from their DNA to chase volume. I was once a major Nissan fan but with every reasonable car having the thrashy 3.5-3.7L and a soul sucking CVT I have moved onto other makes. What ever happened to the silky smooth nature of the granddaddy the VQ30DE?
VW now that is a huge story with no clear answer……
The old Nissan (Prince, really) of the ’70s-90s was sacrificed on the altar of survival when Renault rescued them. There followed a drastic austerity period which only slackened in the last few years. For better or worse, it really is a different automaker now.
Nissan does some things very well, I would argue that their mainstream cars are great values, the xterra is a real SUV, the altima is class leading fuel economy, the leaf is obviously the leading ev, they ate coming out with diesel trucks…they could improve the z or lower the price, and the Maxima makes no sense in light of Infiniti above it and altima below it, it needs to be axed or rethought. One thing im not a fan of is Nissan versa, sentra, altima, and maxima styling post 2003.
Nissan is huge in Latin America. As Latinos move to the US, they bring their allegiance with them. I live in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. If a Latino is not driving a truck, and prefers a sedan, they are almost universally Nissans.
The kid next door got an ’80 Chevy half ton for his first car. When he got tired of working on it, it went away and he came home with a Sentra.
I think Nissan is the new Chevy of the upwardly mobile working class. There still are some of those, many Latino, and I forever see them in Altimas and Rogues. Them’s my anek doats and dozey doats.
+1 to sportyaccordy.
I happened to rent both an Optima and a Jetta on two consecutive business trips that were 2 weeks apart, and with both of them having rather wheezy 4-bangers I’d opt for the Kia too..
VW tried, but failed in some important ways:
1:I’m 5’11” and almost always hit my head on the roof opening when entering the vehicle.
2: with the seat back just far enough to reach the pedals, nothing extreme, the rear view mirror was painfully close to my face..by about 6″. Not desirable in a side-impact crash.
3: The windshield wiper stalk is moved UP to activate all functions, in all other recent cars I’ve driven it’s DOWN to turn on. What was so urgent about them wanting to be different?
4: the auto shift gate was the same way. Selecting individual gears required moving the shifter to the right, every other car I’ve seen has you moving the lever to the left.
5: the heater was totally inadequate. in the hour it took me to go from my workplace the Lester Pearson airport, the cabin temp was barely warm, and it was still about 34F outside. At least the heated seats worked well enough.
All in all a real disappointment. The interior materials were good enough for a car in that segment, but the Optima is the better car with one exception–that transmission felt and drove more like a CVT, and the engine had a cement-mixer quality to it in certain RPM ranges.
With its reputation for being an off-warranty money pit, VW has a LOT of catching up to do.
Germany invented broadcast tv. It was only used for NDSAP town halls. Goebbels failed to grasp the potential.
My jaw dropped when I spotted a broadcast van from aerial footage taken outside the stadium in Riefenstahls ‘Olympia’.
Pretty amazing for 1936. Hers was all film but
they were doing localized early tv broadcasts.
Japs came out with best color – Sony Trinitron or something back in late 60’s.
VW & Nissan have something in common in NA. They can’t do minivans well.
Sorry this was supposed to link with a comment further up.
Even if someone hates cars I don’t understand why they would get an Altima 2.5 or Sentra.
Price. Price. And Price.
Nissan is aggressively discounting. The KMart of auto brands. Pulling demand forward.
Didn’t Mitsubishi do that? Their sales soared for a time. And then the subprime dropped out. 84 month loans and all.
In December I just took ownership of a new 2014 (still baffles me why I couldnt yet get a ’15) Sentra SR and I love it. It’s certainly not as quiet as the ’12 Focus SE that I drive from time to time but it’s oddly more entertaining to toss around… CVT and all. Interior quality is exceptionally average, as is power output for the class. The car is very average in a loveable sort of way AND without the stigma of driving a Corolla.
Call me the minority, but I like my little ~38mpg Sentra.
I’ve heard form Nissan guys that they are outright channel stuffing to get the new volume. This was from a regional rep too, not a single dealer.
I’m curious about Sentra being “a particularly dreadful car to drive”. Is this one of Derek’s famous rhethorical devices like hachiroku being particularly “bad”? I ask because I know a gentleman who owns an American-market R35 GT-R, and his daily driver is a Sentra. Not a Versa (Note), Altima, Juke, or Z. He could’ve chosen any of those, but didn’t. Who should I belive?
I have heard complaints about the lack of any power for passing much above 40mph. I had a friend who, from the spec sheet, decided it satisfied every single thing he needed, and he’s really not an impulse guy, but he couldn’t shake the idea he would die merging onto I-275 or I-696.
As I mentioned above, my ’14 Sentra SR is just fine. Sure, you’re DEFINITELY not going to love its “power” output but it’s by no means overly slow. I’m a 32 year old gearhead with a leadfoot, having previously owned a Celica All-Trac, a miriad of Eclipse and Talon turbo’s and a Dodge Stealth RT/TT. The Sentra works just fine for me for what it is. My daily driver. I’ve never felt that it was “too slow” as I read in the reviews. I think we as a consumer base are jaded by all the high powered offerings from the Focus/Fiesta ST, Subaru WRX and the like.
I can’t speak for the 2013+, but the 2007-2012 always seemed underrated to me: it was well-packaged and had some of the nifty design touches of Nissans of that era.
It was also completely overshadowed by the Versa, though.
The older Sentra’s are a joke and oddly, so was the Versa according to the Nissan sales staff. They were all death trap garbage. Only now does it seem that Nissan realized that they needed to step up their game- and it shows.
I almost bought a 2011 S, local Nissan dealer was blowing out ex-rentals for $10,900, this was in early 2013. Unfortunately most were rather worn looking and only had a single key, which I found offputting. The car itself was very comfortable in a French way (Megane roots I suppose), with a smooth but controlled highway ride and very supple seats. I liked the larger 2.0 4 cylinder, it was a bit gruff but had enough torque to work well with the CVT. Good NVH insulation. Interior plastics were a bit iffy but nothing too terrible. I preferred it to the 2012 Corollas I was test driving, although the Corollas would have better reliability and resale in the long run. Ended up buying a very lightly used 11k mile 2012 Civic LX, at least in part because it was a very clean 1 owner car driven by an older lady who’s knee went bad so she traded in for an automatic.
A friend at work recently bought one, in part with my blessing. He went from an old Grand Cherokee that got 16 mpg and had a leaking heater core (among many other issues), to an affordable compact that gets him close to 40 mpg on his commute, and has enough legroom to easily mount child seats behind him (he’s 6’2″ at least).
Is it full of the latest gizmos? No. He has a pretty basic model with steel wheels and power accessories. Does it drive like a hot hatch? No. But it is a very price competitive entry after discounts in the class, with a lot of good attributes for real world people: room, economy, smooth ride, probably reliability.
I got the SR model with the “drivers package” which included leather steering wheel/shifter, rear disc brakes and an keyless ignition with MSRP of $20,800. I couldn’t get that in a Focus for under $23,000.
Pricepoint, rebates and financing offers are why I purchased mine over a Focus. I was able to get $4800 off MSRP and 0% for 72 months. I’ll still have it paid off in 36 months but it was nice to have build significant buffer between my contracted payment and my *actual* payment should something happen.
Nissan’s problem is Infiniti, however.
Infiniti’s sales have stalled, which means they’re losing market share. Notably, the Leaf outsells every model from Infiniti.
Infiniti adopted alphanumeric names, but to make matters worse, continues to change them. Who can keep track of the Gs, Ms, and Qs?
Well, they make the Maxima and they still believe in the V6. They use some of that famous interior packaging to make a car no bigger than a Pontiac G6 seem bigger on the inside than cars 10-15 inches longer than it, while keeping a giant trunk, while delivering 290 HP, and somehow they’ve made a CVT work.
It’s been a lot better for Nissan since they stopped trying so hard to be Toyota on the cheap. I really liked the IDx idea, and I assumed that, since it’s Nissan, it would have had considerably more power than the FR-S. But they saw the giant fail and didn’t have to pay the tuition themselves.
VW is interesting. It is close to being the largest volume selling auto maker in the world without having much share in the U.S. I think the reasons have nothing to do with pricing or reliability but everything to do with the portfolio. VW makes a lot of the kind of vehicles that Americans dislike.
The golf is their hero car world wide but Americans don’t like hatchbacks so they get the half boiled, Golf with a boot – Jetta.
If the ROW wants a smaller Golf they (we) have the Polo right up to the Polo GTi.
They are also successful with the Amarok, a small pickup which sells well here against the Colorado and Ranger but Americans don’t like small pickups.
The Touareg also sells here as a Cayenne with less bling.
There’re also the Golf and Passat wagons – Americans won’t buy wagons.
Then there’s the Caddy. Lots of them here but the U.S. Would dismiss them as florist vans.
What about the big vans? We have lots of Crafters and Transporters on our roads but the U.S. Is just slowly coming to terms with the Euro style vans from Ford and Ram.
One day VW will make a nice crossover which will sell well in Oz but there won’t be enough customers in the U.S with VW experience for it to challenge the competition.
VW’s foray into the US market decades ago resulted in a lot of VW buyers being disappointed. Me being one of them, since at the time I needed a dependable car for my wife to commute in, to college.
Many Americans are like elephants — they never forget….
Ford was at the brink of failure during the 1980s, until it released a hot new model (the Taurus) and sold a quality message (“Quality is Job 1.”)
Hyundai/Kia was at the brink of failure in the US until it switched to lean production and competed on reliability.
GM lost considerable market share, in part because of reliability.
Reliability matters in the mainstream segments; there is a lot more leeway with the luxury badges.
You have a point about the product lineup, that is part of the problem.
The other issue is that VW continues to market itself as a niche brand, even though it wants volume. It is basically using modern versions of the quirky marketing campaigns that it had in the ’60s. If VW wants to be a major player in the US, then it needs to talk like one.
VW is doing great worldwide, just in the US they don´t have right products + their prices are to high for volume brand, agree with someone mentioning here Buick as niche brand – VW is not luxury brand and doesn t´want to be mainstream so they are stuck somewhere between which is weird, they should do the same like in other markets make local products and be volume-mainstrem brand – that means reasonable market prices.
Someone mentioned also SKoda or Seat, well such brands would need big marketing budget and it would´t make sens to export them in the US, but VW needs maybe ,,cheaper cars,, but they are not willing to do it under VW brand, because they still think they are premium and with this mindset they won ´t be selling much more in 2018 than now. Just add SUV´s and other cars suitable for US consumers, go down with prices and sales go up at least to 600 thousand i think
“We can go right past the long-beaten dead horse of “enthusiast cars don’t make money, nobody buys them, boring sells”, pass go, collect $200 and hone in on the Volkswagen analogy. It is wildly inaccurate.”
And it’s inaccurate for a simple reason: reputation. The business case for “boring sells” is the Camry and Corolla, and both cars have rock-solid reputations for quality and reliability. Passats and Jettas don’t, putting it kindly.
And that’s why boring Camrys sell, but boring Volkswagens don’t.
I have to agree that VW’s troubles in the US do not stem from a lack of Euro-style products. When introduced, the current Jetta and Passat sold better than any of their predecessors, including the B5 Passat, which won car of the year awards all over the place, from enthusiast mags to Consumer Reports.
Their problems are the following:
– Styling: The current Jetta and Passat look like total appliances. Like they aren’t even making an effort.
– Competition: Neither product offers anything special in relation to the competition. They are competent cars, nothing more.
– CUV/SUV Lineup: The Tiguan is ancient and overpriced, the Touraeg too expensive, and the CrossBlue years and years late.
I won’t speak to VW, as that has been covered ad nauseum by the B&B here. Nussan on the other hand…
My family has been a Nissan family for the past 2 decades, and I’ve driven my fair share of rental Altimas and Sentras. Hell, my first car was a 96 Altima 5-speed, which was awesome.
Nissan fell off big time quality-wise in the early 2000s. We had an 02 XTerra and 06 Altima for reference. The Altima blew a motor mount before 60k driven by a 60yo woman, not exactly burnouts and hard launches. The XTerra was developing transmission grinds in 2nd and 3rd gear as well as a leaking rear main seal right before the warranty ran out, and then the fixed parts did again at 80k. While not terrible, I’d definitely not expect that stuff to fail on most other cars, but that’s not the main problem.
Nissan’s main problem is that they’re just not very good. The seat comfort and fabrics/leathers used always left something to be desired. I did 15 hours in that Altima last year and my back and butt were killing me. That never happens in any of the other cars I drive frequently. Thd the switchgear and plastics used are just not to the same quality level of the competition. This has been true for me wiht every more recent rental I’ve been in as well.