VeeDub On The Rise. Carefully

Despite suffering from a market-induced sales conflagration at home and in Europe last April, Volkswagen can pat itself on the shoulder for outperforming the global market. In the first four months of 2010, the world bought 20.9 percent more Volkswagen Group cars than in the same period of last year. That versus an 18.1 rise of the general market.VeeDub’s bacon was saved by China and Brazil, “where Volkswagen is particularly successful,” said a proud VW sales Chief Christian Klingler today. Looking forward, he’s hedging his bets. “Despite the very positive performance to date, we remain cautious about our forecast for the full year. It is still very difficult to predict macroeconomic developments,” a Volkswagen communiqué cites Klingler.Klingler is right to be careful. The red-hot growth in China, Volkswagen’s largest market, shows signs of getting a bit temperate. In the first four months, Volkswagen delivered 620,500 units in China. That’s a growth of 53 percent, underperforming the general market that grew 60 percent in China.In Brazil, VW regained market leadership, however, sales grew only 3.7 percent. In the U.S.A., VeeDub can boast of a gain of 37.7 percent for the first four months. 112,600 cars were sold in the U.S.A. from January to April – not very consequential in light of the 2.34m VeeDub sold worldwide in the same period.In Germany and all of Europe, there are rough roads ahead. Europe seems to turn into carmageddon 2.0, after carmageddon 1.0 had been averted through generous government incentives.As far as the individual Volkswagen brands go, they all go quite well so far. In the first four months of 2009, deliveries of Volkswagen Passenger Cars rose 22.6 percent, Audi grew 23.7 percent, Škoda delivered 18.6 percent more cars, even SEAT clocked-in with a rise of 10.7 percent.In case you ask where Volkswagen stands with unseating Toyota from the world’s top spot: Answers have to wait. Toyota won’t announce January-April sales until next week. And Volkswagen has given itself until 2018 to reach that elusive goal.