Volkswagen Starts The Year With A Bang
Volkswagen as a whole only registered a seven percent rise in the U.S.A., underperforming the market in January. The Volkswagen brand did even worse (+4.2 percent ). Don’t measure Volkswagen worldwide with a U.S. yardstick. A global Metermaß must be applied to the world’s third largest automaker. By that measure, the Volkswagen passenger cars brand surprises with an unexpected jump in January.
Volkswagen delivered 418,800 (January 2010: 359,400) units to customers worldwide in January, an increase of 16.5 percent. And who bought all those cars? The usual suspects.
“The Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand performed particularly well in regions with growing automobile markets,” reports a Volkswagen press release.
In China, Volkswagen sold 187,700 units, 29.4 percent more cars than in January 2010. After GM had alluded to strong numbers, the Volkswagen sales bode very well for the Chinese car market. The January collapse does not appear to happen. (Due to Chinese holidays, January numbers for all of China will be reported late this month.)
62,400 (53,800; +16.1 percent) vehicles were delivered in the South America in January.
In India, Volkswagen Passenger Cars reported a tenfold rise in deliveries to, well, 4,000 units.
With very good numbers from their Audi division (+23 percent to 95,400 cars in January), Worldwide, Volkswagen is off to a good start in January. In the U.S.: Mediocre.
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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US weakness is surprising since I thought Nov and Dec were quite strong for the jetta. Year on year, passat sales must be essentially zero as people wait for model changeover since new model was announced early Jan, same with tiguan although that is very low volumes.
Aren't December/January sales largely older models being cleared off the lots via cash on the hood to make room for coming newer models? If a carmaker doesn't have his channels stuffed, there isn't much inventory to sell, and little reason to put cash on the hood. That would drive sales to the money-giveaway guys, no? GM, Ford and Chrysler all had increases of 20+%, new models on the way and lots of cash incentives. Maybe VW's sales increase w/o incentive cash/excess inventory should be considered good.