Volkswagen Plans to Let Its Hair Down and Throw Off Its Old Clothes in New Strategy

Volkswagen can’t wait for the day when it doesn’t have to spend time and resources dealing with a huge, stressful scandal.

Grey skies will clear up eventually, so the automaker has 250 employees busily crafting its Strategy 2025, a plan designed to carry the company out of its darkest chapter and into future prosperity, Bloomberg reports.

Volkswagen has big, expensive (but not too expensive) things in the works, so say goodbye to the boring, sensible company you thought you knew. At least, that’s the implied message.

Desirable models — vehicles customers want to buy, not should buy — are at the heart of the automaker’s product strategy.

“In the end, a strategy is only good if it leads to products that excite people and that they want to buy,” Matthias Mueller said in a management meeting earlier today.

Strategy 2025 goes live a month from now, so the eight key planks contained within aren’t fully known yet. Who knows, there could be some exciting product announcements hiding in there.

What Mueller would admit to is his willingness to spent whatever his beleaguered operation can spare to fund a new business venture focused on mobility services.

Everyone’s doing it these day, you see, so you’ve gotta go with the flow. As part of its corporate makeover, the automaker will even consider partnering with other companies on some ventures.

Of course, any new expense has to take into account the $18.2 billion set aside to deal with the emissions scandal, its fines, lawsuits and associated buybacks and recalls. To afford a seat at the emerging technologies table, Mueller said the company must “significantly improve cost efficiency.”

In a bid to boost revenues and salvage its formerly good name, the company is already planning a crossover and SUV blitz in the U.S. marketplace. Americans want utility vehicles (which net piles of profit for automakers), so Volkswagen’s “small cars first” strategy of decades past is now dead and buried.

It’s a whole new you Volkswagen.