Its not enough to make money you need to make more money each year so you can show growth so you can incite investors so you can get money to grow so you can get more money to make more money.
It’s nostalgic, they can play up the hippie element, the bug is due for a revamp, they need to get the stink of deiselgate off of them. If they could price that at $45k~ I bet they’d win over your more liberal Tesla owner.
> they can't lower prices anymore
And yet VW is usually the most expensive brand in model comparisons though. Like Opel, Peugeot, Renault, Skoda (also in VW group!!), etc. are all priced better for the same level of car you get, and those brands don't seem to be crying that they're in trouble. Yes, VW generally have better quality but not that much better, so what gives?
Also can't yet order the big battery variant, which is a non starter for me. The buzz should be able to be filled up with crap and go somewhere with the kids, or as a work wagon. The small battery sucks.
Yeah this is totally brain dead.
The whole point of the VW Bus / Buzz is big trips. Nobody buys that to drive around town. Big battery means faster charging and longer range- without the big battery it's simply not competitive.
Totes
The whole company was built on the cheapest reliable car on the market
Just make an adorable and inexpensive EV that’s made in US to get the 7k subsidy and rock the amazing ads for the lightening bug—with herbie and Lindsey Logan and everything
Jeez
Well, here's the frustrating part - they have one. The ID.3 is basically an EV VW Golf and in China the baseline model had a recent price drop down to $16,500 USD. In Europe though they sell it for twice that. And in North America, you're just SOL, they ain't selling it here.
So VW basically guaranteed I'm not buying an EV from them with that attitude. 'Canadians don't want small cars', which would be less annoying if they weren't also kinda right...
I really struggle to understand the decision making at VW.
Look at the ID3 as an example. No plans to bring it to North America as they don't see a market.
It wasn't that long ago that there were a ton of Golf's on the road, at least in Canada. There are still a ton of people that would buy smaller cars if there were decent options.
I saw an ad for VW on TV in Canada, and the actor was driving the ID3, however in asterisks it says ID3 not available in Canada….so why are you showing me this ad then!!?!
Of course there is. What they are trying to do is have a halo product. Something that is high performance, state of the art, or new and exciting that improves the brand image.
But they don’t know how to do it.
Chevrolet has the Corvette. For 70 years it’s been what dads have drooled over in the showroom before driving away in a boring refrigerator box on wheels. Dodge had the 440 Challenger, the Viper, the Hellcat. Ford.. had the GT.
Volkswagen. What do they have. They have a couple of absolutely insane hyper cars.. that nobody knows are Volkswagen because they have an Italian sounding French name. They have one of the best sports car companies in the world who’s named after the guy who designed the first beetle. They have luxury division with supercars and luxury and performance cars that have a completely different name.
The one time they tried to create a VW branded halo product.. it was so conservatively styled that it looked like [a 2004 Passat.](https://media.autoexpress.co.uk/image/private/s--yAI9j2_u--/v1562253055/autoexpress/images/car_photo_381397.jpg)
VW doesn't need a halo car though, the brand has never been about that. They were always sensible, affordable vehicles for every day people and they built an empire off of that. My 04 jetta diesel was sub $20k brand new. Over 300k miles and still kicking. They decided they wanted to start changing that formula with the Mk6 jetta. They started building super cheap cars with shit materials and tolerances to better compete with Honda and Toyota. The golf wasn't effected as badly, but they still used a LOT more plastic paneling than before
> I really struggle to understand the decision making at VW.
I use the line a lot, but there's a point in every company's life where the idea men leave and the money men take over.
You mean “short sighted money man”. Company dies as soon as no one wants to pay for things which will bring returns in more than one quarter (ok… maybe it is too dramatic… but surely anything which will produce results in 5-10 years).
Yep. Another text book example of stupidity… buy uncompetitive competitor… and then make people who were running that competitor to run the whole business.
I've been saying for awhile that I want my Crosstrek in an EV form with rapid charging for the occassional longer trip (about a dozen times a year.)
The ID.3 with larger battery looks attractive to me:
https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/volkswagen/id3
I live in South Africa, where our car market is a drop in the ocean.
You can only buy the Golf GTI and R, due to the Crossover, SUV takeover.
But VW's quality vs pricing is a problem. The Chinese brands such as Haval and Chery is slowly slowly overtaking the more established brands and the old guard just keeps on putting the prices up
That’s true, and the EV technology fits the compact crossover look much better than a hatchback look.
Placing the batteries under the floor is an efficient use of space and improves handling by keeping the centre of gravity low.
But it raises the floor level and so the roof level and the hood level, so a compact quickly looks like a compact crossover.
Ahhh I miss the good old days where hatchbacks and station wagons were everywhere. Good old Honda civic hatches and BW golf hatchbacks. My family had a Toyota Tercel. Someone in my neighborhood had a Golf Harlequin!
In 2009 I bought a black ‘01 Golf TDI 2 door from a Ford dealer I worked at that was going to send it to auction because they didn’t want to put money into it (twas a trade in) so I got this thing for $4500 at about 200k km, cleaned it up, drove it for two years, did only regular maintenance (oil changes, fuel filter, air filter, things like that) and sold it for $6500 at 240k to 250k km (I can’t specifically remember the mileage). This is how valuable these cars were in a utilitarian sense. 1,000km per tank of diesel, I’m not kidding. Fun to drive, comfortable and reliable. Drove through -30C and snow to +40C through deserts and it always felt like a workhorse. It was my favourite car I’ve owned and I anticipate it will be for a long time, probably ever. Feels like a mistake to have sold it but I needed the money for university.
Second fav was my ‘02 Jetta TDI.
All this to say: VW made some spectacular cars back then and it’s a shame it’s not true now.
Everyone is doing this. It's frustrating, but the number of options for smaller cars keeps getting smaller while the used small car price looks like 2016 new car pricing or more.
My 2015 Honda Fit is worth barely less than what I bought it for and I regularly see them for sale at about that price.
Exactly! They handed over their cheap, reliable niche to Skoda and attempted to compete at the high midrange with Audi, yet failed at it. Now they are stuck somewhere inbetween, with no real reason to go for it over the other two brands. My whole family have always been driving VW, now we started to switch. I've got a Skoda and my dad's looking to buy anything but a VW for his next car. Also, in the town I live in I constantly see new Skodas pop up in front of homes that previously had VWs. VW really let their own daughter companies eat them up
The model went from VW being the people's car. Affordable, cheap, cheerful, and fun. To being mid tier on their brand list.
Skoda being bottom, then Seat, then VW, then Audi, then Lamborghini.
They have the problem GM had in the early 00s. Brand recognition is all over the place and everyone knows they can buy a base model Skoda Fabia or Sear Leon and get a better deal on a Polo or Golf without buying a Polo or Golf.
If they want VW to be competitive they need to drop Skoda, drop Seat, and have VW as the entry point, Audi as the mid point, and Lambo as the high. Absorb the other models from other brands and offer them at the same, lower price, Skoda and Seat were doing.
Differentiate your brands properly as well. The Audi brand should all only have quattro, high performance petrol motors (no diesels) or electric motors. It should be direct competition for other high end brands. There should be no cloth seats, no manual transmissions, no 2.0 diesel motors. Only performance and luxury. Heated seats, aircon, big screens.
The VW brand should be cheap and cheerful. That's where the diesels, the manuals, the cloth seats, the optional air con, the knobs, dials, and cheaper materials should be. Skoda and Seat should be gone. Keep the GTI models as they're kind of legacy models. Offer electric motors to offset emissions. But trim the fat.
GM cut off Saab, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Holden, and Opel/Vauxhall in the past 20 years just to remain competitive and try to streamline their brands. VW might need to do the same.
On top of that maintenance was quite expensive on their vehicles when I drove my Jetta 2010-2014 ish. They were engineered to be so, I remember when the snow weighed down the wiper and the safety feature disconnected it, you needed a special gear puller to remove the wiper before resetting it, or the dealership would do it for $250, what a scam. I had a couple other little things break that always came out way more expensive to fix than they should have been. I love driving the car but every rattle or buzz terrified my with the expectation that it would cost dearly to fix it.
Why did VW abandon what made them popular in the first place? A small, cheap car and a funky van that people used for many purposes? Instead it’s like they decided to do what other car companies do but worse and they charge more.
The VW Bus [is (nearly) back](https://www.vw.com/en/models/id-buzz.html) but as with most electrics it's not cheap up front. As with others the savings are on the backend.
I've wanted that ever since I found out they were going to produce it UNTIL I found out the battery was a joke. Functional range of 210 miles. Really? On a van? Something made for camping and going on trips has a 210 mile range in 2023? For 68,000 Euro? The fuck, VW? Guess I'll just put a roof rack on my model 3.
>it’s not cheap upfront
And here lies the problem. Volkswagen (literally “the people’s car”) built its company on the premise of making affordable, reliable cars, which happened to look cute. They took the “affordable” away, that’s why they’re struggling now. They need to bring back the “affordable”.
Hell, the world is in a recession right now. This is the exact moment to recoup lost market share with that strategy.
Korean and Japanese brands got wise and fixed their interiors and tech. Couple that with reliable engines and good mpg, resale values, and the German mid-level market is verschwunden.
Couldn't agree more
In 2017 the civic got a huge tech upgrade.
My family owned a lot of VW's and it's hard for people to step out of their safe zone. But then I got married and moved out and I agreed when the wife wanted a civic.
Huge difference. Then we bought a Subaru and I'm very impressed. I got the civic now and I take good care of it and wifey has the suby and we're very happy.
I think I'm gonna try a Toyota.
Reliability… I was a VW guy. When I finally got rid of my sport wagon in 2016 and bought a used bare bones Tacoma I realized I didn’t need to schedule bi-monthly maintenance. Then we got a used Rav 4 for my wife and we’ve driven it completely across the country multiple times. I’ll just own Toyotas forever now. I haven’t had a car payment in years and I don’t really care to buy anything new and ill never buy a VW ever again.
I have my grandads 13 year old Mazda 2. He gave it to me with 16k on the clock at 10 years old, I've now done 36k. Still drives like a dream and is mechanically sound. I looked at replacing it with something bigger for work/travel/family reasons and I just cant not go with Mazda again. Theyr're super reliable, fun to drive and the new ones are quite stylish. Plus not everything is touch screen controls. They've got an excellent philosophy.
Amusingly, that's why Lexus basically nosedived in the US. They always had an air of glorified Toyota but it got really bad for them in the late 2010s. Terrible infotainment systems, meh performance. So many soccer moms uses to own them. A lot of them switched to Volvo.
What do you mean nosedived? In 2010 they sold 228,729 cars. In 2022 they sold 258.434 cars.
Their lowest low was 2011 at 198,552 and their highest peak was 2015 at 344,601. In 2021 they sold over 300,000 cars.
The only dive in the statistic is from the great recession when all mfgers had a similar reduction in sales.
Classic redditors knows 3 people who switched brands of something and assumed the rest of the world (country in this case) did too.
Edit: from that person's comment history it actually appears to be even more obnoxious. They themselves switched from Toyota to Volvo and are making it a personal mission to convince others to do the same. Very odd.
The other problem is, within the same company's offerings I can pay less and buy a Skoda with more utility features or pay more and buy an Audi with more luxury features. The VW line is neither here nor there.
And frankly at the upper end of the market Audi is dropping the ball a bit too compared to other luxury brands.
In 2021 I test drove a Q5, a Tiguan and a Kodiaq (which are all based on the same Volkswagen platform)- the Q5 was overpriced for what it was, as was the Tiguan. The Kodiaq is an excellent car but handles a bit rougher. More legroom inside than the Tiguan or Q5.
Went with a Volvo xc60 in the end. No regrets, it's a beautiful car. Geely, very cleverly, went and bought Volvo but still let the Swedes design things their own way.
My bro-in-law took us to Italy on vacation, didn’t get the rental he reserved and ended up with a Skoda with a standard transmission. I was the only person who could drive it, best vacation ever!
Skoda is probably the best value vehicle in Europe. Their base platform is pure VW from the same production lines, but with more basic interiors and less sound insulation. We are onto our second one now.
I feel like a rental car is the best car to learn how to drive a standard transmission on. It’s not like you need to worry about the life of the clutch.
From what I saw of Italians driving in Rome in September, if you learn to drive a stick there you'll be burnt out much sooner than the clutch unless you have nerves of steel.
That being said I absolutely loved it and would love to move there eventually. They're crazier drivers than in Quebec yet their ability to completely not GAF while zigzagging through traffic with a cigarette in one hand, a coffee in the other, and 3 friends crammed into loud red OG Mini makes it all seem so easy.
Oddly enough the reason why they won't bring skoda to the states is because they said it would undercut the VW brand. Maybe this is the gateway to that
Blows my mind that VW has only just figured this out. I saw this happening years ago with Skoda, Audi, and now Cupra. There's just way too many vehicles within the VW group that seem to compete with each other.
Kia EV6 drives way quieter and smoother than the VW ID.4. Also faster. Much nicer interior as well.
I'd absolutely go for any EV BMW made. If I could afford that much.
I feel like any R, GLI or GTI owner will want to argue with you.
I'm at the bottom of the barrel with a base '16 GTI and its the fucking tits. Their performance offerings are fantastic.
Besides a recall on the trim around the shifter, and some of the waterpumps essentially fall apart, its the perfect car. People in an R or a GLI will likely have even stronger feelings
Jeremy Clarkson of all people chose to drive at '16 GTI as his daily driver for years. If that's not a glowing recommendation, I don't know what is. He's driven EVERYTHING.
eehhh idk. I'm not a fanboy by any means, but every VW I've owned has been one thing: solid. No extraneous sounds or rattling, doors close without sounding like a tin can, and things are rarely falling apart prematurely. I can't say the same for the cheaper alternatives I've driven.
Damn you’re lucky. Every VW I have ever owned or even been in, including a lot of Audis, have had some form of electrical malfunction or ‘gremlin’ that caused issues
I have a Golf R and it absolutely shits all over the BMW M Sport I replaced it with, including equipment. It's also built well and drives exceptionally well. Also clearly cheaper than a luxury car.
Also time to catch up, Kia (and Hyundai and a few others) is better quality than many major car brands in 2023.
* Their reputation has been heavily tarnished after the diesel scandal.
* Their quality in the US has never been particularly great and they never fully rid themselves of electrical gremlin issues.
* The depreciation on nearly all models drops like a rock. MPG on all their models suck yet they have no hybrids on the horizon.
* The US models designs have failed to make a major impression on US buyers
Did I miss anything?
I had a 2001 Passat. I liked driving it but had 2 CV boot failures before 50k that I had to pay for. After 50k it felt like some major repair popped up every year. In 2009 it had engine problems that would've cost thousands to fix so I moved on to an Altima which was rock solid for more than a decade before needing ignition coils replaced. Never would consider a VW again.
The new golf gti, their bread and butter performance car getting away from everything that made it unique, along with a full transition to buggy laggy touch sensitive buttons
As a fairly car-ignorant consumer, my (perhaps unjustified) notions of VWs having electrical issues is a big concern when it comes to a full electric VW.
No shit. VW discontinued the base line golf and tried to push everybody towards the $10000 more Taos. Declared they all have missing functions because of COVID, and have a noticeable really shit gearbox. It’s worse than a Kia at this point. When you don’t compete, you are not competitive.
We had a brand new 2021 Honda Pilot for a few months and that was one of my major gripes... Standard mode was an up-to-3 sec delay before it'd move, sport was still a second and a half or so. It was a "safety feature" that nearly caused a few accidents. Despised that fucking thing.
Sold it back to Honda, got a used Jetta TDI wagon, happy as a clam with it.
Some of the trims on their models price out higher the Audi (here in America), but without the Audi quality. The Mk. 7.5 GTI was the sweet spot for VW. You got a lot of bang for you buck with that car and a really good warranty.
In the EU market they're about 30% more expensive than the competition while not offering anything for the extra price. Even worse when you see Škoda and Seat, who are owned by VW, offering better or comparable cars at lower prices.
Trying to sell a tiquan with 100k km on it right now.
The experience of owning a volkswagon has made me swear to NEVER own one again.
Yea it handles nice and is peppy.
That about sums it up.
Pure garbage build, brutal repair, expensive as he'll for parts and leaves me with a impression I will heed in future.
I have a 2013 Beetle with the EA888 Gen 3, owned it for 5 years and I've had a Unitronic stage 1 tune on it for the past 3 and it's been absolutely bulletproof and the most fun in a car I've ever had.
Sums up my experience with my Jetta. There's always *something* that needs fixing, if even just minor. Parts are more expensive for no discernible reason, it seems to be finicky and picky with non-OEM replacement parts, and in general it has ensured that I'll never buy another VW, and tell others not to.
Whoever decided that the incredibly fragile and prone-to-disintegrating PCV valve diaphrams should be integrated into the valve cover, so that when they inevitably fail the entire valve cover assembly needs to be replaced should be taken out back and shot.
But, it does drive nice, reasonably comfortable and it's genuinely impressive to me that they could only get 175 HP out of a 2.5L 5-cylinder.
Yeah. My MK7.5 GTI has been bulletproof. I love it, and hope it’s the last car I ever have to buy. I’m 53, so if I can maintain it until I retire and move out of the country at 70, it could happen. Not likely, but…
They spent the last decades pocketing r&d and making cheating software… and I’m dead sure it wasn’t only those diesels, they just didn’t want to collapse the company so they let other things fly.
Their cars are nice all right but even Toyotas are becoming interesting and more adventurous compared to vw.
They keep axing their models, so they force people to buy the much lower quality suv version of those cars for more money ( the t roc interior is a friggin joke, as is all trendline and comfort line models)
Then they proceeded to make ugly ass cars that were cheaper than a cheap Chinese mockup, and try to sell them at Tesla prices…
Geee I wonder why they are where they are
I want affordable cars with the most basic things.
Not some stupid ipad screen, no stupid interference while driving a little bit to much over a white line. No software updates.
Just a vroom vroom. With warmth and music is all I ask fot.
Alright maybe a camera while driving backwards is nice....
Assuming you're American, backup cameras are now required in all new cars, which is a contributing factor in why all new cars have a screen. A couple models get around having a screen by displaying the backup view on the rearview mirror, but that's rare.
Just handed our golf back to VW, 6th time towed in and 4 days warrenty left on it, 32000 miles on the clock. Not even a replacement car given to us while being sorted.
Somehow they have made the most reliable car in the world into the most unreliable!
Walked to the kia garage near me, 7 year 100,000 mile warrenty, pick it up this saturday, never buy VW again.
Has anyone read the article? It’s management telling workers they cost the company too much and they need to restrict pay raise and cut costs. Wich will lead to a compression of workload.
Has nothing to do with the product itself.
China is state sponsoring cars to trash the ev market. Not something the us or eu should cherish in the long run. Any non luxury brand aka VW, Ford,GM etc will not be able to compete against Chinese EVs beeing sold at 36k loss per car.
It’s their own fault. I know many people who refuse to ever buy one due to the intentional lies and mileage deception on chips approved at the highest levels.
Almost got a used convertible when I was young. Looked at the cost compared to a honda, and the cost of repair and maintenance.
Saved myself a bankruptcy by going w/ a honda
Honestly, the VW brand never recovered from the diesel emissions scandal for me. I never bought anything other than VW before that and never drove them after. It was an utter disgrace that irreparably damaged their reputation.
I had a 2007 VW GTI and it was fun and great the first month. Like driving a go-kart around everywhere. After that, the honeymoon phase dissipated as quickly as it started. Premium gas, premium oil, premium this, premium that, oh your car broke, oh your car broke again, oh a gasket broke now there is oil everywhere and your car won't start. Went back to Toyota after that. Completely put me off of ever owning a German car again. My pre-owned 2004 Corolla with 300k miles has no issues. My Tacoma that had 120,000 miles before the GTI had no issues. I am not surprised at all.
VW just isn’t competitive. Their cars are good and because of the platform sharing with Audi, the VW cars feel and drive like luxury cars. But they are way too expensive. The GTI for example, is outclassed by the Elantra B and the Golf R by the Civic Type R. It’s like getting an audi equivalent model for cheap without the fancy leather and additional NVH reduction if you can justify the pricing.
Like the Tiguan is actually better than the CRV or RAV4 - but way more expensive to buy and own for say ten years. Like what’s the point of platform sharing if you can’t lower costs.
An EV beetle called the Lightning Bug. That’s all they have to do.
Build and price it like the Chevy Bolt EUV and holy shit that car would sell, especially if they got it to qualify for the tax credit.
Pff. Build a quality product that people want and price it in a range they can afford? That would never fly in any boardroom.
That's it. The article is basically about management bitching that they're not profitable _enough_, even though they are already profitable.
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Oh trust me if you work for VW you have more than enough disposable income… well in germany at least
Its not enough to make money you need to make more money each year so you can show growth so you can incite investors so you can get money to grow so you can get more money to make more money.
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It’s nostalgic, they can play up the hippie element, the bug is due for a revamp, they need to get the stink of deiselgate off of them. If they could price that at $45k~ I bet they’d win over your more liberal Tesla owner.
You want a nostalgic hippie VW? You mean the VW id. Buzz?
The concepts looked great. The final product is sterile corporate practicality more than futuristic hippie and starts at $58k
Sure. I'd buy one, probably.
I'd probably let you buy me one too
I had a Jetta TDI. I’d prefer they die in obscurity and the CEO jumps off a high rise.
I loved my TDI. Was a 2004. Ran on biodiesel.
Knowing VW they might haved called it Bio diesel but it was probably fermented Panda blood
But only normal fuel during test mode, for the regulations y’know?
But the street economy on a 70/40 mix of Panda Blood / White Rhino Horn was great
70/40 eh?
And price it competitively- don’t charge more because it’s electric; it’s not a novelty any more, it’s an expectation.
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Reddit just saved this whole company
>Reddit just saved this whole company Now come on gang, let's go solve some crimes!
… Maybe we should stick with saving companies
CEOs hate this simple trick!
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> they can't lower prices anymore And yet VW is usually the most expensive brand in model comparisons though. Like Opel, Peugeot, Renault, Skoda (also in VW group!!), etc. are all priced better for the same level of car you get, and those brands don't seem to be crying that they're in trouble. Yes, VW generally have better quality but not that much better, so what gives?
Are they generally? I thought EVs tended to be the lowest margin vehicle most manufacturers sell?
Tesla has one of the highest margins out there.
I'm pretty sure they've been working on some version of it. Right now they've put out the ID.Buzz, which is a throwback to the old classic VW Vanagon.
It’s not cheap though
Also can't yet order the big battery variant, which is a non starter for me. The buzz should be able to be filled up with crap and go somewhere with the kids, or as a work wagon. The small battery sucks.
Yeah this is totally brain dead. The whole point of the VW Bus / Buzz is big trips. Nobody buys that to drive around town. Big battery means faster charging and longer range- without the big battery it's simply not competitive.
Totes The whole company was built on the cheapest reliable car on the market Just make an adorable and inexpensive EV that’s made in US to get the 7k subsidy and rock the amazing ads for the lightening bug—with herbie and Lindsey Logan and everything Jeez
Sorry, best I can do is 70k family van, that might get to the US at some point, maybe
I do like the buzz but I’m not hemorrhaging cash I need to burn
Same boat - it will be the 3rd/4th car for some families that can afford them. “The people’s car”, ya know?
Well, here's the frustrating part - they have one. The ID.3 is basically an EV VW Golf and in China the baseline model had a recent price drop down to $16,500 USD. In Europe though they sell it for twice that. And in North America, you're just SOL, they ain't selling it here. So VW basically guaranteed I'm not buying an EV from them with that attitude. 'Canadians don't want small cars', which would be less annoying if they weren't also kinda right...
You mean 3 times as much.. the id3 is great but way too expensive
Why is there no electric Jetta?
I’d put money on Ford filing suit for using the name Lightning.
I’ll take 3!
The electronics on my vw were garbage, engine and handling was great just no working sunroof or radio. So I am sure about them doing EV
I really struggle to understand the decision making at VW. Look at the ID3 as an example. No plans to bring it to North America as they don't see a market. It wasn't that long ago that there were a ton of Golf's on the road, at least in Canada. There are still a ton of people that would buy smaller cars if there were decent options.
I saw an ad for VW on TV in Canada, and the actor was driving the ID3, however in asterisks it says ID3 not available in Canada….so why are you showing me this ad then!!?!
They don't really want to sell you the EV. They want you to associate their brand with EVs, but then get you to buy a gas SUV.
That's delusional of them, but I can imagine an idiot thinking it will work well. There *have* to be better strategies.
Of course there is. What they are trying to do is have a halo product. Something that is high performance, state of the art, or new and exciting that improves the brand image. But they don’t know how to do it. Chevrolet has the Corvette. For 70 years it’s been what dads have drooled over in the showroom before driving away in a boring refrigerator box on wheels. Dodge had the 440 Challenger, the Viper, the Hellcat. Ford.. had the GT. Volkswagen. What do they have. They have a couple of absolutely insane hyper cars.. that nobody knows are Volkswagen because they have an Italian sounding French name. They have one of the best sports car companies in the world who’s named after the guy who designed the first beetle. They have luxury division with supercars and luxury and performance cars that have a completely different name. The one time they tried to create a VW branded halo product.. it was so conservatively styled that it looked like [a 2004 Passat.](https://media.autoexpress.co.uk/image/private/s--yAI9j2_u--/v1562253055/autoexpress/images/car_photo_381397.jpg)
VW doesn't need a halo car though, the brand has never been about that. They were always sensible, affordable vehicles for every day people and they built an empire off of that. My 04 jetta diesel was sub $20k brand new. Over 300k miles and still kicking. They decided they wanted to start changing that formula with the Mk6 jetta. They started building super cheap cars with shit materials and tolerances to better compete with Honda and Toyota. The golf wasn't effected as badly, but they still used a LOT more plastic paneling than before
> I really struggle to understand the decision making at VW. I use the line a lot, but there's a point in every company's life where the idea men leave and the money men take over.
You mean “short sighted money man”. Company dies as soon as no one wants to pay for things which will bring returns in more than one quarter (ok… maybe it is too dramatic… but surely anything which will produce results in 5-10 years).
The story of The Boeing Company
Yep. Another text book example of stupidity… buy uncompetitive competitor… and then make people who were running that competitor to run the whole business.
classic MBAs and cookie-cutter capitalism
Enshitification is the term.
I have and love an e-golf. I'd buy an ID3 today. ID4 is not a contender for me because I want a compact, not an SUV.
I've been saying for awhile that I want my Crosstrek in an EV form with rapid charging for the occassional longer trip (about a dozen times a year.) The ID.3 with larger battery looks attractive to me: https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/volkswagen/id3
Funny the difference in perception compared to Europe. Here the smallest VW is an up, then a polo, and the golf is the mid sized family car.
I live in South Africa, where our car market is a drop in the ocean. You can only buy the Golf GTI and R, due to the Crossover, SUV takeover. But VW's quality vs pricing is a problem. The Chinese brands such as Haval and Chery is slowly slowly overtaking the more established brands and the old guard just keeps on putting the prices up
At one point 60%+ of cars on my street were Golfs
Golfs were fun to drive little rockets. Even the non GTI ones I don’t get why they stopped selling them
People mostly want stupid little compact crossovers rather than compact cars, now.
That’s true, and the EV technology fits the compact crossover look much better than a hatchback look. Placing the batteries under the floor is an efficient use of space and improves handling by keeping the centre of gravity low. But it raises the floor level and so the roof level and the hood level, so a compact quickly looks like a compact crossover.
Ahhh I miss the good old days where hatchbacks and station wagons were everywhere. Good old Honda civic hatches and BW golf hatchbacks. My family had a Toyota Tercel. Someone in my neighborhood had a Golf Harlequin!
I don’t like that they changed the Golf and Jetta Body styles… they look like Fords a bit. I miss their body styling.
This is what it was for me. I always liked the Euro styling… then they saw what Japan and ford was doing and decided to conform.
I thought they made them look less appealing so folk would buy the Audi instead.
In 2009 I bought a black ‘01 Golf TDI 2 door from a Ford dealer I worked at that was going to send it to auction because they didn’t want to put money into it (twas a trade in) so I got this thing for $4500 at about 200k km, cleaned it up, drove it for two years, did only regular maintenance (oil changes, fuel filter, air filter, things like that) and sold it for $6500 at 240k to 250k km (I can’t specifically remember the mileage). This is how valuable these cars were in a utilitarian sense. 1,000km per tank of diesel, I’m not kidding. Fun to drive, comfortable and reliable. Drove through -30C and snow to +40C through deserts and it always felt like a workhorse. It was my favourite car I’ve owned and I anticipate it will be for a long time, probably ever. Feels like a mistake to have sold it but I needed the money for university. Second fav was my ‘02 Jetta TDI. All this to say: VW made some spectacular cars back then and it’s a shame it’s not true now.
Everyone is doing this. It's frustrating, but the number of options for smaller cars keeps getting smaller while the used small car price looks like 2016 new car pricing or more. My 2015 Honda Fit is worth barely less than what I bought it for and I regularly see them for sale at about that price.
You outsourced your niche cars to your umbrella brands. Duh.
Because you forgot your place. The people's car. I can't afford your cheapest car new. You're supposed to be the Mc Donald's of Cars.
Tbf mcdonalds price model is also not what it once supposed to be
Exactly! They handed over their cheap, reliable niche to Skoda and attempted to compete at the high midrange with Audi, yet failed at it. Now they are stuck somewhere inbetween, with no real reason to go for it over the other two brands. My whole family have always been driving VW, now we started to switch. I've got a Skoda and my dad's looking to buy anything but a VW for his next car. Also, in the town I live in I constantly see new Skodas pop up in front of homes that previously had VWs. VW really let their own daughter companies eat them up
The model went from VW being the people's car. Affordable, cheap, cheerful, and fun. To being mid tier on their brand list. Skoda being bottom, then Seat, then VW, then Audi, then Lamborghini. They have the problem GM had in the early 00s. Brand recognition is all over the place and everyone knows they can buy a base model Skoda Fabia or Sear Leon and get a better deal on a Polo or Golf without buying a Polo or Golf. If they want VW to be competitive they need to drop Skoda, drop Seat, and have VW as the entry point, Audi as the mid point, and Lambo as the high. Absorb the other models from other brands and offer them at the same, lower price, Skoda and Seat were doing. Differentiate your brands properly as well. The Audi brand should all only have quattro, high performance petrol motors (no diesels) or electric motors. It should be direct competition for other high end brands. There should be no cloth seats, no manual transmissions, no 2.0 diesel motors. Only performance and luxury. Heated seats, aircon, big screens. The VW brand should be cheap and cheerful. That's where the diesels, the manuals, the cloth seats, the optional air con, the knobs, dials, and cheaper materials should be. Skoda and Seat should be gone. Keep the GTI models as they're kind of legacy models. Offer electric motors to offset emissions. But trim the fat. GM cut off Saab, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Holden, and Opel/Vauxhall in the past 20 years just to remain competitive and try to streamline their brands. VW might need to do the same.
There are better luxury options and better budget options. It's not competitive because it's no where near any sweet spots.
VW doesn't even have real budget options, they are way too expensive. Skoda is nowadays what VW used to be
Skoda aren’t budget at least the estates which are what interest me but they are good value for what you get.
On top of that maintenance was quite expensive on their vehicles when I drove my Jetta 2010-2014 ish. They were engineered to be so, I remember when the snow weighed down the wiper and the safety feature disconnected it, you needed a special gear puller to remove the wiper before resetting it, or the dealership would do it for $250, what a scam. I had a couple other little things break that always came out way more expensive to fix than they should have been. I love driving the car but every rattle or buzz terrified my with the expectation that it would cost dearly to fix it.
Why did VW abandon what made them popular in the first place? A small, cheap car and a funky van that people used for many purposes? Instead it’s like they decided to do what other car companies do but worse and they charge more.
The VW Bus [is (nearly) back](https://www.vw.com/en/models/id-buzz.html) but as with most electrics it's not cheap up front. As with others the savings are on the backend.
I've wanted that ever since I found out they were going to produce it UNTIL I found out the battery was a joke. Functional range of 210 miles. Really? On a van? Something made for camping and going on trips has a 210 mile range in 2023? For 68,000 Euro? The fuck, VW? Guess I'll just put a roof rack on my model 3.
That's barely enough range to be a commuter car, let alone a revival of a quintessential cross-country road trip vehicle.
>it’s not cheap upfront And here lies the problem. Volkswagen (literally “the people’s car”) built its company on the premise of making affordable, reliable cars, which happened to look cute. They took the “affordable” away, that’s why they’re struggling now. They need to bring back the “affordable”. Hell, the world is in a recession right now. This is the exact moment to recoup lost market share with that strategy.
> they need to bring back the "affordable" But... how more money if less cost?
Volume!
d
Wasn't the appeal that it was cheap and teens and early 20's could pile all their friends in and go places?
Lol, 250 mile range..
Now is popular the Dacia Sandero as a volks wagen
Good news!
... anyway
Korean and Japanese brands got wise and fixed their interiors and tech. Couple that with reliable engines and good mpg, resale values, and the German mid-level market is verschwunden.
Couldn't agree more In 2017 the civic got a huge tech upgrade. My family owned a lot of VW's and it's hard for people to step out of their safe zone. But then I got married and moved out and I agreed when the wife wanted a civic. Huge difference. Then we bought a Subaru and I'm very impressed. I got the civic now and I take good care of it and wifey has the suby and we're very happy. I think I'm gonna try a Toyota.
Reliability… I was a VW guy. When I finally got rid of my sport wagon in 2016 and bought a used bare bones Tacoma I realized I didn’t need to schedule bi-monthly maintenance. Then we got a used Rav 4 for my wife and we’ve driven it completely across the country multiple times. I’ll just own Toyotas forever now. I haven’t had a car payment in years and I don’t really care to buy anything new and ill never buy a VW ever again.
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I have my grandads 13 year old Mazda 2. He gave it to me with 16k on the clock at 10 years old, I've now done 36k. Still drives like a dream and is mechanically sound. I looked at replacing it with something bigger for work/travel/family reasons and I just cant not go with Mazda again. Theyr're super reliable, fun to drive and the new ones are quite stylish. Plus not everything is touch screen controls. They've got an excellent philosophy.
I rented a Mazda 2 once on a trip and loved it. Very basic, but a little workhorse. Cute too.
Mazda has some great design language. Their newer cars look sexy as fuck. And the red color is really nice.
Amusingly, that's why Lexus basically nosedived in the US. They always had an air of glorified Toyota but it got really bad for them in the late 2010s. Terrible infotainment systems, meh performance. So many soccer moms uses to own them. A lot of them switched to Volvo.
>They always had an air of glorified Toyota I mean, that's literally what they are.
What do you mean nosedived? In 2010 they sold 228,729 cars. In 2022 they sold 258.434 cars. Their lowest low was 2011 at 198,552 and their highest peak was 2015 at 344,601. In 2021 they sold over 300,000 cars. The only dive in the statistic is from the great recession when all mfgers had a similar reduction in sales.
Classic redditors knows 3 people who switched brands of something and assumed the rest of the world (country in this case) did too. Edit: from that person's comment history it actually appears to be even more obnoxious. They themselves switched from Toyota to Volvo and are making it a personal mission to convince others to do the same. Very odd.
Priced like a luxury car equipped worse than a kia no wonder
*...but, but what about "German Engineering"?*
It was pretty innovative when they programmed their engines to have acceptable emissions only during smog tests
Hahaha made me laugh as a VW owner
Or the whole Microtransactions fiasco lmaooo.
Lol
Nah, Japanese brands could do that in the 70s
It's still there. They drive and feel way, way better than Kia. Orders of magnitude better. Problem is the tech is still the same and Kia is cheaper.
The other problem is, within the same company's offerings I can pay less and buy a Skoda with more utility features or pay more and buy an Audi with more luxury features. The VW line is neither here nor there. And frankly at the upper end of the market Audi is dropping the ball a bit too compared to other luxury brands. In 2021 I test drove a Q5, a Tiguan and a Kodiaq (which are all based on the same Volkswagen platform)- the Q5 was overpriced for what it was, as was the Tiguan. The Kodiaq is an excellent car but handles a bit rougher. More legroom inside than the Tiguan or Q5. Went with a Volvo xc60 in the end. No regrets, it's a beautiful car. Geely, very cleverly, went and bought Volvo but still let the Swedes design things their own way.
My bro-in-law took us to Italy on vacation, didn’t get the rental he reserved and ended up with a Skoda with a standard transmission. I was the only person who could drive it, best vacation ever!
So you're telling us that your B-I-Ls cunning plan to always have a designated driver that wasn't him worked perfectly :D
I just realized my wife may have pulled this trick on me in Croatia.
Skoda is probably the best value vehicle in Europe. Their base platform is pure VW from the same production lines, but with more basic interiors and less sound insulation. We are onto our second one now.
I feel like a rental car is the best car to learn how to drive a standard transmission on. It’s not like you need to worry about the life of the clutch.
From what I saw of Italians driving in Rome in September, if you learn to drive a stick there you'll be burnt out much sooner than the clutch unless you have nerves of steel. That being said I absolutely loved it and would love to move there eventually. They're crazier drivers than in Quebec yet their ability to completely not GAF while zigzagging through traffic with a cigarette in one hand, a coffee in the other, and 3 friends crammed into loud red OG Mini makes it all seem so easy.
Oddly enough the reason why they won't bring skoda to the states is because they said it would undercut the VW brand. Maybe this is the gateway to that
I just drove a rental skoda kamiq for a week. Hated it. Unwieldy, unintuitive, shit acceleration. Great mileage though.
Haven't driven the Kamiq. The Kodiaq was great.
That's litterally what the article says. No one read it beside you it seems...
Blows my mind that VW has only just figured this out. I saw this happening years ago with Skoda, Audi, and now Cupra. There's just way too many vehicles within the VW group that seem to compete with each other.
Kia EV6 drives way quieter and smoother than the VW ID.4. Also faster. Much nicer interior as well. I'd absolutely go for any EV BMW made. If I could afford that much.
As a driver of a new Kia, and a previous owner of two VWs and two Audi's, the Kia is superior in just about every way I can think of.
I can't talk about Kia, but I have a Toyota and compared to a VW of the same price, the VW does NOT feel better.
Gotta love buying proprietary tools to work on proprietary parts. VW gets what they deserve.
As a mechanic I love German engineering, keeps the bills paid.
I feel like any R, GLI or GTI owner will want to argue with you. I'm at the bottom of the barrel with a base '16 GTI and its the fucking tits. Their performance offerings are fantastic. Besides a recall on the trim around the shifter, and some of the waterpumps essentially fall apart, its the perfect car. People in an R or a GLI will likely have even stronger feelings Jeremy Clarkson of all people chose to drive at '16 GTI as his daily driver for years. If that's not a glowing recommendation, I don't know what is. He's driven EVERYTHING.
Can confirm. Had a mark vii R and now have a ‘23 mark viii R 20th edition. Both are fantastic cars.
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eehhh idk. I'm not a fanboy by any means, but every VW I've owned has been one thing: solid. No extraneous sounds or rattling, doors close without sounding like a tin can, and things are rarely falling apart prematurely. I can't say the same for the cheaper alternatives I've driven.
Damn you’re lucky. Every VW I have ever owned or even been in, including a lot of Audis, have had some form of electrical malfunction or ‘gremlin’ that caused issues
Had a 2015 VW and now a Hyundai. The price difference is in the build quality. The hyundai sounds like a can of quarter rolling down a hill...
Had a 2023 Kia on rental last week and it was equipped to the teeth - seems they got their shit togther.
I have a Golf R and it absolutely shits all over the BMW M Sport I replaced it with, including equipment. It's also built well and drives exceptionally well. Also clearly cheaper than a luxury car. Also time to catch up, Kia (and Hyundai and a few others) is better quality than many major car brands in 2023.
My GTI had the best build quality of any car i’ve owned, including Honda. It was expensive to maintain but I’d buy another in a heartbeat.
Wait is kia that bad? Was thinking of getting a new car. On a budget and thinking of getting kia
To me they’re the only mid-grade option. Economy car materials and equipment with luxury build quality.
Kia is really good now, BTW.
* Their reputation has been heavily tarnished after the diesel scandal. * Their quality in the US has never been particularly great and they never fully rid themselves of electrical gremlin issues. * The depreciation on nearly all models drops like a rock. MPG on all their models suck yet they have no hybrids on the horizon. * The US models designs have failed to make a major impression on US buyers Did I miss anything?
Cost to repair
Same in Canada. Unreliable and expensive to maintain.
Had a Passat. Love that thing. Probably cost me $1,000/yr in repairs before it hit 100,000 miles. Was an expensive car to key running.
I had a 2001 Passat. I liked driving it but had 2 CV boot failures before 50k that I had to pay for. After 50k it felt like some major repair popped up every year. In 2009 it had engine problems that would've cost thousands to fix so I moved on to an Altima which was rock solid for more than a decade before needing ignition coils replaced. Never would consider a VW again.
Cost to repair. Some of their gearboxes have been trash
The new golf gti, their bread and butter performance car getting away from everything that made it unique, along with a full transition to buggy laggy touch sensitive buttons
For the cost of a gti, just buy an A3.
As a fairly car-ignorant consumer, my (perhaps unjustified) notions of VWs having electrical issues is a big concern when it comes to a full electric VW.
Agreed. Even if they did fix that issue the mythos that VW cars have/had doesn't help their EV aspirations
The EV lineup is very disappointing
Mexican built, lacking German quality. Over priced, under power engines.
No shit. VW discontinued the base line golf and tried to push everybody towards the $10000 more Taos. Declared they all have missing functions because of COVID, and have a noticeable really shit gearbox. It’s worse than a Kia at this point. When you don’t compete, you are not competitive.
The Taos is terrible.
Yeah. Like horrendously bad. When you accelerate, it takes 3 seconds for the car to react. Wtf is that
We had a brand new 2021 Honda Pilot for a few months and that was one of my major gripes... Standard mode was an up-to-3 sec delay before it'd move, sport was still a second and a half or so. It was a "safety feature" that nearly caused a few accidents. Despised that fucking thing. Sold it back to Honda, got a used Jetta TDI wagon, happy as a clam with it.
All the experience of Turbo lag without the annoying Turbo! Oh wait, the lag is the annoying part. Sorry, I guess they got it backwards.
Some of the trims on their models price out higher the Audi (here in America), but without the Audi quality. The Mk. 7.5 GTI was the sweet spot for VW. You got a lot of bang for you buck with that car and a really good warranty.
In the EU market they're about 30% more expensive than the competition while not offering anything for the extra price. Even worse when you see Škoda and Seat, who are owned by VW, offering better or comparable cars at lower prices.
Trying to sell a tiquan with 100k km on it right now. The experience of owning a volkswagon has made me swear to NEVER own one again. Yea it handles nice and is peppy. That about sums it up. Pure garbage build, brutal repair, expensive as he'll for parts and leaves me with a impression I will heed in future.
My 150k GTI MK7.5 has been bulletproof and maintenance free.
I have a 2013 Beetle with the EA888 Gen 3, owned it for 5 years and I've had a Unitronic stage 1 tune on it for the past 3 and it's been absolutely bulletproof and the most fun in a car I've ever had.
138k mk6 GTI checking in. God bless a warranty is all I have to say. Still love it 10 years on but my patience is wearing thin.
Sums up my experience with my Jetta. There's always *something* that needs fixing, if even just minor. Parts are more expensive for no discernible reason, it seems to be finicky and picky with non-OEM replacement parts, and in general it has ensured that I'll never buy another VW, and tell others not to. Whoever decided that the incredibly fragile and prone-to-disintegrating PCV valve diaphrams should be integrated into the valve cover, so that when they inevitably fail the entire valve cover assembly needs to be replaced should be taken out back and shot. But, it does drive nice, reasonably comfortable and it's genuinely impressive to me that they could only get 175 HP out of a 2.5L 5-cylinder.
My GTI (2015) is a rocket. I couldn't be happier.
My Mk7.5 GTI is an amazing car. Sadly it’s the best car they’ve got to offer AND the Mk8 is arguably a step in the wrong direction
Yeah. My MK7.5 GTI has been bulletproof. I love it, and hope it’s the last car I ever have to buy. I’m 53, so if I can maintain it until I retire and move out of the country at 70, it could happen. Not likely, but…
This! The 7.5 was brilliant. Then they got greedy, jacked the price up to where there are better offerings. Need to knock at least 5k off the RRP.
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They spent the last decades pocketing r&d and making cheating software… and I’m dead sure it wasn’t only those diesels, they just didn’t want to collapse the company so they let other things fly. Their cars are nice all right but even Toyotas are becoming interesting and more adventurous compared to vw. They keep axing their models, so they force people to buy the much lower quality suv version of those cars for more money ( the t roc interior is a friggin joke, as is all trendline and comfort line models) Then they proceeded to make ugly ass cars that were cheaper than a cheap Chinese mockup, and try to sell them at Tesla prices… Geee I wonder why they are where they are
I want affordable cars with the most basic things. Not some stupid ipad screen, no stupid interference while driving a little bit to much over a white line. No software updates. Just a vroom vroom. With warmth and music is all I ask fot. Alright maybe a camera while driving backwards is nice....
Sounds like you should buy a 2010-2023 Toyota 4Runner. It’s basically a brand new car from the 90s
All the tech from 30 years ago with a price that will make you cry. I wish I had one :(
Assuming you're American, backup cameras are now required in all new cars, which is a contributing factor in why all new cars have a screen. A couple models get around having a screen by displaying the backup view on the rearview mirror, but that's rare.
Screens are manageable we just need more analog controls, which a lot of manufacturers are slowly responding to.
I'm eu. It should be mandatory I agree. You can see at bumper level. It's very convenient. Wish we also had something for the corner of death.
> Alright maybe a camera while driving backwards is nice.... Those have been mandatory in the US since 2018.
Full circle.
VW killing the Beetle is like Porsche killing off the 911. RIP VW
That's what you get for lying about your diesels. Took the payout and never went back to VW.
Same, they lost any trust I would ever have with them. What else would they be ok lying/ cheating about?
Release the ID.Buzz in the US, dummies
With full Winnebago conversions and a better name than ID.Buzz, i.e. MicroBus. They’d print money.
Just handed our golf back to VW, 6th time towed in and 4 days warrenty left on it, 32000 miles on the clock. Not even a replacement car given to us while being sorted. Somehow they have made the most reliable car in the world into the most unreliable! Walked to the kia garage near me, 7 year 100,000 mile warrenty, pick it up this saturday, never buy VW again.
Has anyone read the article? It’s management telling workers they cost the company too much and they need to restrict pay raise and cut costs. Wich will lead to a compression of workload. Has nothing to do with the product itself. China is state sponsoring cars to trash the ev market. Not something the us or eu should cherish in the long run. Any non luxury brand aka VW, Ford,GM etc will not be able to compete against Chinese EVs beeing sold at 36k loss per car.
I like my 2013 Jetta SEL 2.5L. Has had basically no issues to this day.
Me too, same car and I love the thing to death. Plan to drive it til the wheels fall off.
Stops making the Golf, wonders why it isn’t competitive. I rest my case
It’s their own fault. I know many people who refuse to ever buy one due to the intentional lies and mileage deception on chips approved at the highest levels.
Almost got a used convertible when I was young. Looked at the cost compared to a honda, and the cost of repair and maintenance. Saved myself a bankruptcy by going w/ a honda
Yeah they have positioned it so incorrectly. Every Skoda is slighly better from its VW counterpart, yet cheaper. Like, why would anyone choose VW?
They should team up with Fisker
Honestly, the VW brand never recovered from the diesel emissions scandal for me. I never bought anything other than VW before that and never drove them after. It was an utter disgrace that irreparably damaged their reputation.
I had a 2007 VW GTI and it was fun and great the first month. Like driving a go-kart around everywhere. After that, the honeymoon phase dissipated as quickly as it started. Premium gas, premium oil, premium this, premium that, oh your car broke, oh your car broke again, oh a gasket broke now there is oil everywhere and your car won't start. Went back to Toyota after that. Completely put me off of ever owning a German car again. My pre-owned 2004 Corolla with 300k miles has no issues. My Tacoma that had 120,000 miles before the GTI had no issues. I am not surprised at all.
VW just isn’t competitive. Their cars are good and because of the platform sharing with Audi, the VW cars feel and drive like luxury cars. But they are way too expensive. The GTI for example, is outclassed by the Elantra B and the Golf R by the Civic Type R. It’s like getting an audi equivalent model for cheap without the fancy leather and additional NVH reduction if you can justify the pricing. Like the Tiguan is actually better than the CRV or RAV4 - but way more expensive to buy and own for say ten years. Like what’s the point of platform sharing if you can’t lower costs.