Volkswagen aims to triple its sales
Automaker to make its cars more accessible
Detroit: Jonathan Browning, the new chief of Volkswagen's US operations, has a tall order from the automaker's corporate czars in Wolfsburg, Germany: Start selling 800,000 VWs annually by 2018.
That's more than three times its sales last year. VW sold hundreds of thousands of the iconic Beetle decades ago and was the top auto importer in America, and such a goal seemed within reach then. But a long battle with quality and reliability problems have driven those buyers to Asian brands and even back to domestic manufacturers. "We need to get people in the door to see what a VW is today," Browning said. He plans to start with the new generation Passat midsize sedan, which VW was set to unveil yesterday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. VW will pitch the Passat as "German engineering" at an "accessible" price. The car, equipped with a manual transmission and a 2.5-liter five-cylinder engine that delivers 170 horsepower, will start at about $20,000 (Dh73,448). Automatic transmission models and versions with larger engines will cost more.
"This is targeted at people who might be driving a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord or a Ford Fusion who previously had never considered a Volkswagen," said Toscan Bennett, VW's vice-president of product marketing and strategy in the US VW will build the sedan at a new $1 billion factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
It goes on sale this fall. For Browning to have any chance to grow VW's sales from the 257,000 vehicles purchased in 2010, the new Passat needs to be a hit, said Jesse Toprak, an analyst at TrueCar.com. Midsize cars account for about 25 per cent of the US auto market, but VW is weak in that area. The automaker sells two midsize sedans: the current Passat and a sportier CC. But the US sales totals are small — just 42,500 for the pair last year. Toyota regularly sells more than 30,000 Camrys monthly.
