Carmageddon? Audi Rakes It In
Carmageddon was hell for makers of premium brands. For all but – Audi. Audi closed out the crisis year 2009 with a after tax profit of €1.3b, reports Automobilwoche [sub]. And all that despite sinking sales. Speaking of sinking sales, Audi emerged relatively unscathed from 2009. Their sales sunk by only 5.4 percent, mostly due to booming business in China. Even the workers profit.
There will be an average bonus of €2300 (with the usual wealth gap between management and worker bees.) But there will also be a one time Dankeschön worth €1200 for everybody.
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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Is it possible that the reason Audi did better than the premium makes is that consumers don't view Audi as premium, but merely upscale? I haven't seen any surveys to confirm or disprove that. Has anyone?
This has little to do with styling or perception - it has EVERYTHING to do with Audi having had the vision years ago to position itself well in the GLOBAL automotive market, with China as the leading example.
"The Japanese, with their Jet Jaguar school of design (think Acura) will never understand." Those Acura models are indeed absolutely hideous. Infiniti is almost classy, but I don't want either a wrongly spelled word or a subliminal Illuminati pyramid logo on my car. I can deal with abbreviations of words or such as long as the pyramid is not there on the car. The irony is that evil Adam (Adam Weishaupt) was born in Ingolstadt and yet Audi does not wear the pyramid. Why is it that the Japanese can make these awesome animated vehicles (just watch Macross Plus or Macross 2 etc.) and yet you look at a (modern) Acura and nearly cringe?
You feel pretty strongly about that pyramid thing, huh?