#Germany

When I helped Volkswagen launch its Golf GTI in 1976, Volkswagen wanted to make only 5,000. They wanted to make even less, actually, but 5,000 were needed for homologation as a racer. Volkswagen was convinced that no mentally stable person would be nuts enough to buy a little car like that with a 110 hp engine. Boy were they ever wrong. It took well into the 80’s for the Golf GTI to come to America. When I said “Americans love muscle cars,” the answer was: “Haven’t you heard? 55 miles an hour.” Wrong again. Today, Volkswagen shows the seventh generation of the archetypical hot hatch. at the Geneva International Motor Show.

The Chinese-Israeli co-production Qoros has not sold a single car yet, but it already finds itself in the legal hot seat. Via a temporary injunction of a court in Hamburg, Germany, Audi precluded Qoros from using – the letter Q.

Legs of RenCen executives must be covered with black and blue marks from kicking themselves daily for not unloading Opel when the German government offered to take the sick patient off GM’s hands. A deal, financed with $6 billion courtesy of German tax payers and a little petty cash from Russian bankers would have given GM a little money and an immediate end of the huge losses at Opel. Frankly, nobody in Germany had much hope for an Opel under Magna and the Russians either, it was seen as a hospice where to wheel the sick patient until it dies in silence, a la Saab.

At the last minute, GM changed its mind. Who made the ill-fated decision? Was Akerson for keeping Opel, or for getting rid of it?

This was then ….

1973, the year when BS started his long career of doing propaganda for Volkswagen, is known for two equally momentous occasions: Volkswagen prepared for the initial launch of the Golf. Also, formerly staid Volkswagen became a bit risque when marketing its iconic Bug, and promptly got into hot water. 40 years later, they are doing it again. Hopefully, people have more humor than 40 years ago. I doubt it.

Opel sales chief Matthias Seidl

The rebellion of German Opel dealers against a new, complicated and – in the dealers’ views – disastrous distribution system was victorious. Opel’s sales chief Matthias Seidl withdrew the discredited and disdained design. “Dealers succeeded with their demands for a simpler system,” writes Automobilwoche [sub].

BMW’s 3-Series is always the benchmark, always the target, and always on a pedestal. So when GM announced Cadillac would once again “complete head-on” with BMW’s money-maker, the world yawned. Then an interesting thing happened, publications started fawning over the ATS, proclaiming the 3-Series has met its match. Could such a thing be true? Even our own Michael Karesh was smitten by the ATS at a launch event. To find out how the ATS matches up with its German rival, Cadillac tossed us the keys to a loaded ATS 3.6 AWD. Can Cadillac beat BMW at their own game? Let’s find out.

It is good to hear that bad puns have survived a decade of uptight up-positioning at Volkswagen, and are alive and well. You had me worried, friends. Under the tagline “As sun as possible”, Volkswagen starts a digital campaign that brings the new Beetle Cabriolet to the Interwebs.

Opel’s new CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann isn’t officially CEO yet, and he already is facing a rebellion of his troops. Opel dealers threaten to discontinue the brand if Opel won’t withdraw a new distribution system. The dealers say the system comes from where Neumann and Opel’s sales chief Matthias Seidl come from: From Volkswagen.

More bad news from Europe: The new car market in Germany, last year an island of stability in a sea of red, was down 8.6 percent in January. On the back of worse news from other European volume markets, this does not bode well for when ACEA will publish its European data next week.

Audi follows a trend set by other OEMs, notably GM, and opens an R&D Center in China. Located in Beijing’s fashionable 751 D-Park , the center will be busy doing product customization for the Asian market, especially when it comes to electronics and connectivity, along with components for new-energy vehicles and efficient powertrains.

In 2007, when Martin Winterkorn took over as CEO of Volkswagen, he said that Volkswagen wants to be better than Toyota, not just in units, but in profitability, innovation, customer satisfaction, everything. This morphed into the “Strategie 2018”, which called for world domination no later than what the name says. Today, Volkswagen changed its mind. Declaring an early victory, it wants to move on.

Not to anyone’s huge surprise, the Opel Supervisory Board today confirmed former Volkswagen exec Karl-Thomas Neumann as CEO of Opel. To make the job a little more interesting, “General Motors appointed Dr. Neumann president of GM Europe and GM vice president,” as a GM communique says. It continues that Neumann “will become a member of GM’s Executive Committee and is expected to play a key role in the global leadership of GM.”

Uh-oh: The price of doing car business in Germany is heading up, increasing pressure especially on Opel. “Germany’s IG Metall union may push a pay claim between 5 and 6.5 percent for about 100,000 workers at VW’s six western German factories” Bernd Osterloh, head of VW’s works council told Reuters today. What does this have to do with Opel, you say?

With only a 1.9 percent of lost sales in the black hole called Europe, Volkswagen remains relatively unaffected by the European contagion, especially compared to PSA (- 12.9 percent), Renault (-19.1 percent), Opel (- 15.8 percent), Ford (- 13.2 percent) and Fiat (- 16.1 percent). But Volkswagen can’t walk on water either. Volkswagen is throttling down the production of its bread & butter car, the Passat in reaction to lackluster demand.

Germany’s metal worker union IG Metall proposed a new plan yesterday to solve the overcapacity at Opel without undue grief on its members: The union will agree to the closure of Opel’s Bochum plant, if Opel guarantees that no hobs will be lost until 2018. Reuters takes that as a tacit warming up to the inevitable, while demanding the seemingly impossible.