March 31, 2008
Model Heidi Klum "guests" on a talk show hosted by Max, the star character of VW's new ads.
NEW YORK — Herbie the Love Bug rides again … sort of.
Volkswagen, which has a goal of tripling U.S. sales to about 1 million vehicles by 2018, is rolling out a classic Beetle as the brand's face and voice in a quirky TV, Web and print ad campaign that starts Monday in print and will be on TV starting Saturday, according to USA Today.
The campaign's star is "Max," a pristinely restored 1964 black Bug.
The stepped-up brand advertising precedes Volkswagen's introduction this year of several new vehicles, including the Tiguan crossover SUV, Routan minivan, Passat CC, clean diesel Jetta TDI and Jetta SportWagen. VW would not disclose the ad budget.
"We're reintroducing Volkswagen to the world by using a lovable icon that everyone will know and relate to," says Tim Ellis, VW's vice president of marketing. "Max will be integrated into everything we do and will be the connective tissue as we launch new vehicles."
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth 
at 12:39 PM | Permalink
March 13, 2008
WOLFSBURG, Germany -- Volkswagen AG aims to sell 8 million cars a year by 2011 - almost 30 percent more than last year - and will introduce 20 more models including vans, pickups and sport utility vehicles in a bid to expand its market share in Asia, Europe and North America, according to the Associated Press.
Europe's biggest automaker by sales is also looking at building a new plant in the United States that could produce between 100,000 and 150,000 cars per year.
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 9:57 AM | Permalink
December 3, 2007
The ink is hardly dry on the Chrysler-Daimler divorce papers, but already, another German carmaker could be waiting in the wings for the American carmaker, according to thecarconnection.com
David Cole, chairman of the Center For Automotive Research, said competition is forcing automakers to consider options they might not have contemplated only 12 months ago.
"There is going to be another round of mergers in the auto industry and the one company that matches up well with Volkswagen is Chrysler," he noted.
Volkswagen already has a joint project with Chrysler to develop a new minivan, which will be assembled by Chrysler in the next couple of years and will be sold in the U.S.
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 10:55 AM | Permalink
November 14, 2007
Model year 2008 Volkswagens are most likely to retain the largest portion of their value after five years of ownership, according to study by Kelly Blue Book, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Using information from the company’s analysis of new and used cars and trucks, Kelly Blue Book put Volkswagen at the top of a list of 10 vehicle brands with the best projected resale value. BMW and Acura were second and third on the list. The bottom three brands on the list were Suzuki, Kia and GMC, according to the report.
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 10:41 AM | Permalink
October 24, 2007
FRANKFURT, Germany — Porsche set out to fail the last time it made a takeover for Volkswagen. That likely won't be the case if it tries again, according to USA Today.
The sports car company has an open road for another attempt, after the European Union's highest court struck down the nearly 50-year old "VW law" enacted to protect Europe's largest automaker from a hostile takeover.
Tuesday's ruling will reverberate across Europe, where many governments have attempted to protect companies they see as vital to their economies from being bought, particularly by foreign investors.
German politicians and labor unions had argued that the 47-year-old measure was needed to protect local jobs.
The EU Court of Justice, however, said the law — which capped a shareholder's voting rights at 20%, whatever the size of its holding — limited "the free movement of capital" that is a tenet of the European Union.
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 11:13 AM | Permalink
September 24, 2007
Sorry, all you wanna-be Bugatti buyers. If you can't come up with the $1.4 million it'd take to park a Veyron in your garage, you'll have to just settle for something more mundane - perhaps a Ferrari F430 or Mercedes-Benz SLR, according to thecarconnection.com
The reborn French marque, the top-line subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, has been struggling to lay out plans for its post-Veyron future, and according to senior managers, one likely move would be to introduce a second model at a slightly more reasonable price.
Make that former managers. With sales of the $1.4-million supercar running at an even more modest pace than the one per week originally forecast, VW ordered a shake-up earlier this year. And now, the new managers have nixed the idea of letting the Bugatti name appear on something that might come in at just a million dollars even.
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 4:23 PM | Permalink
September 14, 2007
FRANKFURT - When it comes to this year's Frankfurt Motor Show, UP! is down, according to thecarconnection.com
Downsized that is, in the form of Volkswagen's pint-sized prototype car. Dubbed the UP!, it makes the automaker's original Beetle look positively huge. For the moment, the UP! is little more than a concept vehicle, but you likely won't have to wait very long to see it - or one of several variants the German maker will reveal later this year - go into production.
The same is true for a trio of minicar concepts revealed by General Motors, during its time in the Frankfurt spotlight. The American giant hopes to gauge reaction at this and several other major world auto shows to see if there's enough demand to justify production
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 1:23 PM | Permalink
September 13, 2007
While Daimler continues to plug money into the never-profitable smart project, its very dogged determination has attracted at least two wannabes to the Frankfurt auto show this year, according to thecarconnection.com.
Volkswagen's UP! Concept is one, and Toyota 's IQ city car is the other.
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 11:21 AM | Permalink
While the automaker still needs "to do some homework," it is beginning to look like little more than a matter of time before Volkswagen officials approve a long-considered U.S. assembly plant, according to thecarconnection.com.
One of the key questions left to resolve is whether the automaker will use that facility to produce a product specifically for the American market, agreed several senior officials, or one or more high-volume models that could be exported around the world, in part, to take advantage of the steadily weakening U.S. dollar.
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 11:18 AM | Permalink
FRANKFURT, Germany — Two decades after diesel cars all but vanished from American roads in a cloud of sooty smoke, are Americans ready to give them another try?
That is a big question at the Frankfurt Motor Show this week, as European carmakers roll out “clean diesel” vehicles — their answer to the call for more efficient, climate-friendly cars, according to the New York Times.
Betting that diesel power will become an alternative to the hybrids popularized by Toyota and other Japanese carmakers, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volkswagen all plan to sell new diesel automobiles in the United States in the coming year, and many of them are on show here
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 11:12 AM | Permalink
September 11, 2007
Considering it is rolling out barely one Veyron a week, you'd be hard-pressed to call the reborn Bugatti brand "mainstream." But for some folks, two identical cars are just too darn many.
So look for a special lineup of what will be the ultimate in limited editions, the Bugatti Pur Sang, or "pure blood," in French, according to thecarconnection.com
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth at 10:13 AM | Permalink
July 27, 2007
Volkswagen AG, Europe's biggest automaker by sales, said Friday that its profit in the second quarter and first six months of 2007 soared on better-than-expected sales in Europe and China, according to the Associated Press.
They also were boosted by cost-cutting efforts at home in Germany, the company said.
Posted by at 2:25 PM | Permalink
