Volkswagen Gets A Russian Bride
It must be Russian week. Yesterday , it was Ford and Sollers (and Sollers minus Fiat/Chrysler). Today, it’s Volkswagen and GAZ going to the altar. The two plan a joint venture to produce 300,000 cars per year in Russia, The Moscow Times reports.
The Russian press departments of the happy couple have a “no comment” on the matter. There is no press release from the Wolfsburg HQ of VW. However, Volkswagen had said in October that it was in advanced talks with GAZ.
According to the report, the joint venture will make a range of cars out of the Volkswagen stable, including the Jetta, Skoda Octavia and Skoda Yeti models. That would make sense. All of them are derivatives of the Golf.
The attentive reader will remember GAZ as a presumptive partner in the Opel/Magna mess and as a new joint venture partner of GM in Russia.
GAZ, controlled by industrial tycoon Oleg Deripaska, will use its plant in Nizhny Novgorod for the joint-venture project. It has an annual capacity of 120,000 units per year. VW will use its Kaluga facility in Russia, where its 150,000 unit capacity can be expanded to produce 180,000 vehicles per year.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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