Earlier today Mr. Demuro entertained us with a post about why VW's strategy is doomed to fail on the heels of Jonathan Browning stepping down as VW Group of America CEO.
Doug claims that VW has alienated enthusiasts, that normal people think they're cars are crap and that the brand doesn't have an SUV that's competitive.
I'm not a VW enthusiast, but I did own a MKV GTI for a brief time and it was a fun car. It was equipped with a DSG transmission (Gasp - an automatic) and for the time (2008) it was a standout transmission for that segment and price point. I like the car, but I got rid of it after 8 months because I liked the C6 Corvette more.
Doug makes some very good points in his post. I wanted to tackle the question but from a different angle: with facts. You know, good old fashioned boring numbers. The stuff that turns wannabe engineers into struggling writers.
What I was able to piece together was the chart in the image above. This was constructed using two pieces of data.
The first is VW's Mid-Model Year Fuel Economy report. These are volume projections by model, make and trim provided to NHTSA by each automaker. These reports are held confidential until that sales model has ended production. The 2012 Mid-Model Year data was made public last week.
I contrasted these projections to VW's actual sales by model in the US for the same year.
The data automakers provide NHTSA is (supposedly) based on actual sales goals.
The SUV did well
Based on the chart it appears VW was very close to achieving their SUV sales goal and surpassed their CUV sales goals. While Doug may be correct, VW doesn't have an SUV in terms of volume, the one they do have appears to have sold at the volume VW had projected for 2012.
Where did they fall short?
The CC missed it's anticipated target by almost 26% and the Eos by 17%. How does that happen? Did VW think a refresh of the CC was going to move 30,000 units in America? Talk about putting all your eggs in the style basket.
There is good news. It looks like Passat had greater success than VW had anticipated, with sales 22% higher than expected.
All together it looks like 2012 was moderate-to-good year from the perspective of achieving volume targets. The element missing from this picture of course is any incentive spending or offers that were required to move this inventory.
The real trouble starts to arise when you look at 2013 sales. For example to match last year's sales totals VW needs to sell 64,445 cars this month. That's a lot of Sign and Drives.
Again, if you're wondering about the SUV, because of course you are, sales of the Touareg are down 19% at this point compared to last year.
Has VW lost it's mojo? Yes and no.
You have to also keep in mind that in 2006 when Americans were strung out on Lines of Equity and were splurging on everything consumers could consume, VW only moved 230,000 cars in the US of A.
While VW looks poised for a small dip in VW sales in America, they'll still likely come in around the 418,000 unit mark and when looked at through the lens of 2006, it would appear like a success story.
Now, if only they can figure out how to sell 20,000 CCs this month.
Is Volkswagen's strategy really doomed to fail?