It’s a new Wirtschaftswunder, a new economic miracle: While sales in Germany and Europe nosedive, Volkswagen can’t make cars fast enough, and produces record results. In June, German car sales were down 28.7 percent. The European market was down 6.9 percent. That should hurt Volkswagen, by far Europe’s largest carmaker big, shouldn’t it? It should, but it didn’t. In the first half of 2010, the Volkswagen Group delivered more vehicles than they hoped in their wildest dreams.
Volkswagen delivered 3.58m units to customers in the first six months of 2010. (January to June 2009: 3.10m). That’s an increase of 16 percent. How did they perform this economic miracle? You probably know the answer already.
The largest market of Volkswagen is now officially China. Volkswagen posted a 45.7 percent rise in deliveries in China in the first six months, selling nearly a million cars (950,300 to be exact) in the Middle Kingdom. Even in the U.S.A., VeeDub’s chronical weak spot, Volkswagen grew 29.2 percent in the first six months, from 135,800 in 2009 to 175,300 in January to June 2010. That made up for Europe, where Volkswagen grew 4.7 percent. So far the Volkswagen press release.
They left out the best part: Because of the low Euro , the high sales abroad will have a very positive effect to their bottom line.
Hmmm…I don’t get it, at least in the case of the North American sales. I guess the CC is nice, but the Touareg is really looking dated, and compared to the competition the Tiguan is way overpriced and gets poor fuel economy. The only real deal in the lineup as I see it is the Golf wagon – is that the model that is carrying them in North America? And even that one suffers from dowdy styling – you have to be awfully practically minded to fall in love with that car.
By number of units in the 1H2010, Golf & Jetta account for 55% of VW’s US upswing. Old warhorses New Beetle & Passat account for about 20% of the uptick, and the Tiguan & CC account for the rest. Eos, Touareg & the “Stadt und Land” are essentially flat.
Say what you like about the Tiguan, I think it’s the nicest looking vehicle in its class, and it falls a little short of obscenely more expensive than the competition. It kind of jibes with VW in the US being like Apple – you’re paying for style.
Sportwagen (sans Jetta for 2011) sales are almost entirely diesel, so yeah, the buyers are aiming for practicality. The facelift helps with the dowdiness, IMO, but the rump on that car is still pretty bad.
VW Press Release link doesn’t seem to work for me. It looks like you need to have a journalist’s special login.
Click on “English” on the left margin and the press release will come up.
Didn’t know VW made the Fox in Germany. Are those not imports from VW do Brasil?
Yep, they are. So I’d figure this is the import- not the export lot in Bremerhaven.
Pretty impressive facilities over there – that’s where quite a huge part of overseas cars enters Europe. There used to be a company running a shop to prep the cars, as well. Mostly Japanese cars back then. They’d come off the line in Japan in one general Euro-trim and then get modified, some times even repainted there. Shows nicely in some old papers, where the color code wouldn’t match the actual car colors. It was based on how the car entered the country, not how it was reconfigured in Bremerhaven.
Don’t know if they still do that, though…
When we visited the Glass Factory earlier this year in Dresden, the plant director told us over half the Phaetons being built at the time were going to China.
I am not sure that’s what Piech had in mind in the late 90’s when he commissioned the Phaeton, but don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.