Cash Piling Up on the Hood of Volkswagen's Arteon
A perplexing vehicle we discussed not long ago has never been cheaper, but don’t expect to read about it in an ad.
The Volkswagen Arteon, a large-ish midsize premium sedan that exists despite the presence of Audi beneath the VW Group umbrella, was apparently struck by Cupid’s arrow on Valentine’s Day. Contained in that arrow (fired from a window at VW of America HQ) was incentives.
As reported by CarsDirect, last Friday brought boosted discounts for the liftback that’s thus far failed to sell more than 400 units a month in America. It landed on these shores last spring.
Just keep in mind that these discounts apply only to unsold 2019 models.
It seems the unadvertised dealer cash incentives run from $3,500 to $5,000 on a car that arrived in this market with $2,500 on the hood. Whether or not you can actually find a sweet deal on an Arteon depends on locale and luck. CarsDirect notes one California dealer selling a 2019 Arteon SE for $8,671 off, lowering its price to just $559 more than a 2020 Passat SE advertised by the same dealer.
That’s a pretty good price for a lot of new German car — one that’s a fair bit more potent than the Passat, despite sharing its displacement.
Those looking to finance an Arteon will notice that VW has shaved the interest rate from 0.9 percent to nothing (for 72 months), tacking on a $2,000 discount. That’s one way to move metal in the short term. Longer term, Volkswagen would like to see the range-topping model become less invisible.
At the recent Chicago Auto Show, VW’s marketing boss said advertising dollars are set to flow, hopefully boosting the model’s profile.
[Image: Volkswagen]
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It has comparatively weak performance numbers and the few people buying cars like this these days are red mist types.
This is a great looking vehicle selling for too much and wearing the wrong badge at a time when CUVs are hot.
40K is way too much for this kind of car.It has no snobbish value i.e. it is for folks like me who do not care about Audi badge and I bought new Fusion which is very similar for $30K. So I would expects somewhere 8K-10K discount and saying that I did not even noticed it in SF auto-show. Somehow it rendered itself invisible. So I have no idea about interior quality. I remember Passat was very bad.
Interesting. I was in Italy last week and saw one of these in rental car parking when I was picking up my car. I had never heard of one. I checked the VW badging and concluded it must be a Europe only vehicle. In fact, I snapped a pic of it to research upon my return home. At a glance I thought it was a rebadging of the Passat CC.