Volkswagen AG has big ambitions. Let's hope they do not lead it down the path that Toyota has recently been forced to take after quality issues forced a massive recall of vehicles with faulty accelerator pedals.

What's the connection? It seems Toyota took its eye off the quality ball on which it had built its reputation as it pursued the goal of unseating General Motors as the world's largest auto maker.

Now VW says it plans to take over the number one spot. It is currently No.3 after General Motors and Toyota.

This ambition might seem out of place to the average American. VW is a secondary player in the U.S. market where it sold just 18,000 vehicles in January.

But consider that the VW group includes Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Scania (Swedish commercial vehicle manufacturer), SEAT (Spanish car maker) and Skoda (Czech car maker) and will effectively takeover Porsche next year. The VW Golf is the third best selling car in the world.

VW is Europe's biggest automaker and aims to boost sales by about 60 percent by 2018. To be sure, that is a long way out and anything could happen in the meantime as in Pestilence, War, Famine and Death.

But any one of four horsemen of the Apocalypse would be beyond VW's control. What is in its control, one hopes, is quality control as it pursues the lead in global auto sales.

Peter C.T. Elsworth