An Open Letter To Michael Horn, the New President of Volkswagen Group of America

Dear Herr Horn:

Congratulations upon becoming the new president of Volkswagen Group of America.  Some are ready to offer their condolences.  After all, as everyone knows, Volkswagen sales in the U.S. declined by 5.2 percent in 2013, and many analysts attribute the decline to strong resurgences from General Motors and Toyota.  Furthermore, some sneer, there's no way Volkswagen can possibly gain more market share to meet Wolfsburg's 8 in '18 goal - 800,000 Volkswagens sold in the United States by 2018.  And, of, course, your U.S. product lineup is familiar and venerable, like the original Beetle was year after year, at a time when such adjectives are epithets in the car business.  Americans don't want new editions of old cars; they want something fresh and exciting, which the Detroit Three and the Japanese Big Three - Toyota, Honda and Nissan - have been providing in spades lately.  The Jetta and the Passat are showing signs of aging after only two or three years, and the oldest car in your U.S. lineup - the Golf - is actually seven years old, owing to to the sixth-generation model being a modified fifth-generation car with a different body and the Golf name (instead of the Rabbit badge).      

Okay, stalled sales are worrisome.  But, Herr Horn, you have some good numbers that Jonathan Browning, your predecessor left you.  VW sales in the United States doubled between 2009 and 2012, and the pace of sales growth was faster than those for Ford and Toyota in the same period.  And your company has invested so much money in this country, including the plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that you're in a good position to enlarge its presence in These States.

Think your company is in dire straits now, Herr Horn?  Let me throw a number out at you: 49,533.  That's the number of cars Volkswagen sold in the U.S. in all of 1993.  Compared to that figure, 373,689 cars for 2013 through November is actually . . . pretty good!  I should also note that, twenty years ago this month, when Volkswagen introduced the Concept 1 show car, which became the New Beetle, at the Detroit auto show, many auto analysts predicted that VW was about to die in the United States.  As you have probably figured out already, dying is easy, but selling cars in America, like comedy, is hard.  (For a German like yourself, comedy is harder still.)  Volkswagen has had some good years and some bad years since the J Mays/Freeman Thomas concept car first made news in January 1994, but no one can argue that it's not in a better position now than it was then.

So let's see, Herr Horn . . ..  You're bringing over the new Golf and GTI soon.  Good.  Now . . ..  Two of the most popular automotive market segments in the U.S. are seven-seat SUVs and pickup trucks.  Problem?  No pickup truck in the U.S. market, and the seven-seat SUV you're planning isn't due until 2016.  Another problem: You haven't had anything in this market positioned below the Golf since 1993 and every promise of adding the Polo to American and Canadian showrooms ends the same way as Lucy's promise not to pull away the football when Charlie Brown tries to kick it - unfulfilled.  (You probably don't get the analogy, because you're not an American, but I can assure you, my American readers know what I'm talking about.)  Yet another problem:  The Eos is nice, but its retractable hardtop and $35,195 tag is kind of off-putting to some buyers.  Also, it's not really a sport model.  And don't get me started on the absence of the Scirocco in the New World.           

A lot of us VW loyalists in the States have made suggestions as to the products you should bring over here, in your capacity as the new president of Volkswagen Group of America, to jazz things up again and to capitalize on what's going right for Volkswagen in America.  Here are my suggestions, some of which have already been made by others:  

Bring the next Polo.  Rumors started circulating in 2013 that Volkswagen was finally ready to being its Polo subcompact to the U.S. and Canada by 2016, in part to comply with corporate average fuel economy standards in the United States.  Then Jonathan Browning suddenly turned around and said it would only make economic sense to make the Polo in America, and there are no plans right now to do so.  Herr Horn, what are you waiting for? Other mass-market-priced brands have subcompact models and there are plenty of Americans who would by a VW subcompact.  We American "dubbers" have been waiting for nearly four decades to buy a Polo.  Enough already! We know gasoline will never be expensive enough in the U.S. to get Americans to buy an Up!, and I don't expect that micro-car to ever reach these shores, so I'm not asking for the moon.  I'm asking for the Polo.  

Build the next Passat in America.  I mean the eighth-generation European version, Herr Horn.  The NMS Passat currently made in Tennessee has its virtues, the main one being that it's not a Mark 6 Jetta.  It's more German in ride and interior appointments than the Jetta, but the overall size and feel are definitely American.  Now, I've seen the next B8 Passat, and I think it looks terrific.  I expect it will at least as big as the NMS model, and I see that the engine choices include a 1.4-liter entry-level 122-hp gasoline engine and a 2.0-liter TSI, with diesels ranging from 109 to 231 horses.  Of course, I would expect larger four-cylinder engines and a V-6 in the States, but they would be engines powering a vehicle superior to what comes out of the Chattanooga plant today.  The NMS is a good car.  The B-class European Passat is just better.

Bring back the Transporter passenger van.  Okay, passenger vans aren't as lucrative as they used to be.  Neither is rock and roll, but someone out there is still buying Tame Impala records, right?  Look, Herr Horn, just add the T6 (sixth-generation Transporter) van to the U.S. lineup when it goes on sale in the Old Country in 2015, and bring in only as many units as you can reasonably expect to sell.

   

You'll be pleasantly surprised how many you can sell.  Because this van is funky!

Bring the Touran.  Please, Herr Horn? Because in the unlikely event that I ever have a wife and 2.6 children, and I need a five-seat compact MPV, I don't want to have to buy a Mazda 5.  Or a Dodge Journey.

Add the Amarok pickup and make it in Chattanooga.  You need a pickup in America.  You have a plant in the American South.  Southerners love pickups.  So do other Americans.  Du'uh!  I would never buy one, but many more Americans would.  Just make sure to change the name for American customers.  Because Don McLean never sang, "I was a lonely teenage bronc-kin' buck, with a pink carnation and an Amarok."      

Produce the BlueSport roadster concept.  It's sharp, it's cool, it's light, it's fuel-efficient . . . What's not to love?  It's a nice, practical little roadster, just like the Karmann Ghia of yore.

And finally . . .

Bring the Scirocco.  VW doesn't want to sell the Scirocco in North America because it doesn't want to cannibalize GTI sales?  Explain to me, Herr Horn, how come German customers obviously don't favor one model at the disadvantage of the other? Because they're two different vehicles.  The GTI is a sport version of a practical family car.  The Scirocco is a low-slung sports coupe for single guys - and gals.  You just don't want to sell it here because it would be too expensive to sell here owing to the dollar-euro exchange rate.  Then build it here if you have to.  Or in Mexico. Just bring the damn thing.

Okay, those are my suggestions, Herr Horn, so you can take them or leave them.  You'll probably leave them.  But here's one last piece of advice I'd like to offer.  That 8 in '18 plan? Not going to happen.  Younger people in America are buying fewer cars and taking more public transportation - how European! - and older buyers are more likely to stay with the same brands they've been with for years.  The U.S. auto market simply isn't going to grow much more.  So let your bosses know that VW should accept the idea of a smaller and more discerning customer base in the United States.

That should give you all the impetus you need to make sure that the next Jetta, even if it looks like a Honda, will not, like the current Jetta, drive like one. ;-)