Volkswagen Does It Again . . . and Again . . and Again . . .

Volkswagen has announced the opening of a new research and development facility in its Chattanooga, Tennessee plant, along with an investment in a new assembly line to produce a new midsize SUV in addition to the NMS Passat intermediate sedan it currently makes there.  Essentially, the company is putting resources into figuring out what sort of cars Americans want, how to sell more cars in the U.S., and how to include the sort of creature comforts Americans expect and demand in order to reverse a sales slump.

That last sentence could have been written in 1978.  And 1987.  And 1994.  And 2005.  Volkswagen has tried and failed before to give Americans what they want, and it pains me to see VW having to go through this all over again.  Every time the firm thinks it's finally figured out the American consumer, acts accordingly, and poises itself for future growth, the public shrugs at VW offerings and goes elsewhere.  How can a company that just made $4.35 billion in global sales in the second quarter of 2014 and is poised to overtake Toyota worldwide keep getting everything so wrong in the United States?

Take two of Volkswagen's most recent U.S. offerings.  The NMS Passat and the current Jetta sedan sparked interest in Volkswagen's product line, but the Passat resembled a Toyota a bit too much and the Jetta resembled a Toyota way too much.  If you want a Toyota, you go to a Toyota dealership.  Even worse, Volkswagen hasn't figured out how to make a sport utility vehicle Americans will actually buy, and, much to the chagrin of those of us who hate SUVs, that market is not likely to cool down any time soon.  Not unless the ISIS terrorist group trying to start an Islamic caliphate out of Iraqi and Syrian real estate succeeds in its efforts.  In which case, VW could be coming out with its midsize SUV - now slated for the 2017 model year - just as gas prices double or triple once the caliphate controls all those oil fields.

And even then, VW might not be able to sell any cars in the U.S. even if it packs its American dealerships with Polos (wishful thinking).  Do you like rear-view cameras?  USB ports for cellular telephone charging?  Pandora streaming Internet radio, which is included in entry-level Asian brands such as Honda, Toyota and Hyundai?  Sorry, VW doesn't have any of that in any of its cars.  Volkswagen has always been behind the curve when it comes to offering the latest amenities (I had a cassette deck in my 2000 Golf.  My 2000 Golf!), and even though I can do without a lot of these new features (except streaming Internet radio, what with terrestrial radio in America increasingly sucking), a lot of people would kind of like them in their cars.

(Pointless aside I can't resist:  When I bought my 2000 Golf, I had the chance to get an in-dash CD player as an option along with my cassette deck, but I forewent it and decided I could always tape my CDs to listen to in my car.  Then stores stopped selling blank tapes, and I couldn't tape my CDs anymore.  I later added a 6-disc CD player to my 2000 Golf, which had to be loaded in the rear of the car.  My 2012 Golf has an in-dash CD player . . . just as CDs are becoming obsolete.  Good thing I have plenty of those.)

Volkswagen's dominance in its early days in America, by the way, is something of a myth.  Even at the height of the Beetle's popularity in the late sixties, Volkswagen never had more than five to seven percent of the U.S. market; VWs were niche vehicles at the time when the import market segment itself was a niche.  Today, non-American car brands account for the majority of cars sold here, and Toyota in particular has a 14.3 percent market share here, but VW remains a bit player.  Bringing back the Beetle in watercooled, front-wheel-drive form in 1998 and redesigning it for 2012 may have rejuvenated sales for awhile in both instances, but Beetle fans were never more than a small population of Americans to begin with.  Similarly, the Golf is a niche vehicle in These States, and it seems all too appropriate that the all-new Golf - currently being hampered by quality control problems in Mexico - was advertised on World Cup broadcasts.  Soccer is a niche sport here in America.  It's sort of sad, bearing all that in mind, for Volkswagen to set in the U.S. an "8 in '18" goal - 800,000 cars sold per year by 2018 - when Toyota sold 2.2 million vehicles in the U.S. in 2013, while Honda and Nissan sold 1.5 million vehicles and 1.2 million vehicles here, respectively, that same year.

Ryan Beene of Crain's Automotive News noted recently that Honda and Toyota dominated the U.S. market first by opening factories here and then later shifting more product development and engineering duties from Japan, which resulted in the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry being created mostly by American designers, engineers and product planners.  Whether that can help VW at this point in the game - look to the Westmoreland Rabbit to see how well that worked the first time the company tried it - is unclear. But if Volkswagen wants to be a major player in America, it ought to stop trying to pick off Toyota and Honda buyers with cars that vaguely resemble them, and it ought to remember that it's at its best when it offers products that live up to its reputation for building drivers' cars.  And if it's going to expand into the SUV market, VW has to offer something as distinctively a Volkswagen as the Microbus was, and not some Ford Explorer knockoff.  It also has to remember that the Beetle, while not for everyone, got Americans to think small.  If it wants to sell more cars in the U.S., it shouldn't just cater to American tastes; it should get people to think of cars the way VW and VW's customers in Germany and the rest of Europe do.  (Volkswagen is Europe's number-one automaker.)  At the very least, VW should concentrate on pleasing its loyalist base with the right cars and the right features, and find more customers like, well, me for the Golf, which may create demand for models currently unavailable in the U.S. that it may yet offer here.  Volkswagen doesn't have to please everybody; it just has to please as many people as possible.

Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers union is trying to unionize the workers at Volkswagen's Tennessee plant, despite the union vote setback earlier this year . . . but that's another story.