A discussion about Volkswagen’s strangest ideas would be a long and potentially heated one. Not selling the latest Scirocco here, for example, but offering the Touareg V10 TDI. Producing the Phaeton W12 at all. Creating new sales volume goals by multiplying previous ones together. But to me, one bizarre Volkswagen creation stands tall above the rest: the 1996 Golf Harlequin Edition.
Canadian fuel cell firm Ballard Power inked a deal with Volkswagen that could be worth as much as $100-million and last up to 6 years.
VW will reward the manual-diesel-wagon brigade with not one but two products set to satiate your Euro lust. In addition to the next generation Golf Variant (aka the Jetta SportWagen), Volkswagen confirmed that the next-gen Golf GTD will make it to our shores as well.
The volks who worry about Volkswagen being incapable of directing its big band of brands should make a trip to Geneva. Today, the boys from Wolfsburg launch a barrage at all target groups.
Aimed at the “blogger who drives mother’s old Celica and googles for super car pics” segment, Lamborghini delivers more bull: (Read More…)
Audi’s global deliveries were “clearly lower” than in January, Audi’s CEO Rupert Stadler told Reuters reporter Andreas Cremer in Geneva. Audi’s global sales were up 16.3 percent in January. There won’t be a minus said Stadler, even while fighting the lunar calendar, Audi will report a single digit plus.
Audi’s numbers won’t be the only ones that won’t look as good as the month before.
Toyota released global sales and production numbers for January 2013 today. Toyota is making good on its plans to catch its breath after a breakneck race back to the top of the pile. Toyota said its 2013 production would be flat, and flat it was with an 0.3 percent gain over January 2012. Let’s have a look at the other contenders. (Read More…)
When I helped Volkswagen launch its Golf GTI in 1976, Volkswagen wanted to make only 5,000. They wanted to make even less, actually, but 5,000 were needed for homologation as a racer. Volkswagen was convinced that no mentally stable person would be nuts enough to buy a little car like that with a 110 hp engine. Boy were they ever wrong. It took well into the 80’s for the Golf GTI to come to America. When I said “Americans love muscle cars,” the answer was: “Haven’t you heard? 55 miles an hour.” Wrong again. Today, Volkswagen shows the seventh generation of the archetypical hot hatch. at the Geneva International Motor Show.
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Winterkorn gets honorary PhD. He deserves it
Despite a severe contraction of its European home market, Volkswagen today announced record earnings for 2012. The group delivered an after tax profit of €21.9 billion ($28.9 billion) up from €15.8 billion ($20.9 billion) in the preceding year. (Read More…)
We’ve discussed the importance of scale countless times on this website. La Tribune takes a brief look at Ford, Volkswagen and PSA and the different ways they are working to achieve economies of scale in one of the toughest markets in the auto industry; the C-Segment.
Until the research arm of TTAC gets more funding, we’ll have to rely on data from third-parties like J.D. Power. The venerable outfit recently compiled a list of the Top 10 cars with the highest percentage of Gen Y buyers. The results aren’t entirely surprising.
Afew years after its debut in concept form, Volkswagen is readying the ultra-efficient XL1 on a limited production basis. The XL1 could cost as much as 70,000 pounds (or $106,000), and return as much as 314 mpg (according to European test protocols).
Toyota will make in the neighborhood of 10 million units this year, but plans on a big push for 2014 that will propel it way beyond the 10 million mark. (Read More…)
Shuffled off to the side of the Volkswagen display at the Canadian International Auto Show was this Golf, sporting a carbon fibre roof and side mirrors.
Volkswagen raced into the new year, and any silent hopes by the competition that the Wolfsburg juggernaut would finally be slowed down by the drag called Europe were dashed. Europe’s largest carmakers began the year with a 14.9 percent increase, delivering nearly 100,000 units more worldwide than in January 2012. (Read More…)
Remember TTAC’s Future Writers Week? You chose the writers. The writers wrote. The stories are in (well, most of them …). Here is the first one. Do you like it? Tell us. The stories will be published in the sequence in which they arrived in TTAC’s mailbox.
Despite living in California for nearly eight years now, and recently becoming a citizen of these United States, I still consider myself to be an Englishman. To be English in America is a generally pleasant experience – no man will ever get tired of pretty girls telling him how cute his accent is – but it is also a life full of little differences which remind you every day that this is not your home, even though it is where you live.
One such difference I have noted, particularly around this site, is the American perception of Volkswagen, which I find quite puzzling.
So please indulge me by engaging in a brief mind exercise and bounce this scenario around your brain for a moment: What if everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen? (Read More…)
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