If Volkswagen of America decides not to offer the base version of the eighth-generation Golf hatchback - debuting in Germany this month - in the United States, it will be the latest in a series of stupid decisions made by either VW's U.S. division or the parent company with regard to the American market. Volkswagen is blessed with having a loyal, albeit small, base of American customers that will buy its European-style compact cars, even though such cars fell out of favor with mainstream America decades ago, but because of mainstream tastes we don't get a lot of cars Europeans are spoiled with. But even when European compacts were popular among import buyers, VW would sometimes make a bad call. Here's a list of some of the worst decisions Volkswagen AG or Volkswagen of America made for the U.S. market.
This list does not include the cheat software on TDI diesel engines, as that was a global issue. Besides, that decision was so bad, it's in a class by itself. But while other decisions regarding the U.S. market weren't as atrocious, they were bad enough. And here they are:
The absence of a Type 3 notchback. Volkswagen debuted its first notchback model (below) with the introduction of the Type 3 1500 at the 1961 Frankfurt Auto Show. The Type 3 cars started out with reliability problems, and Volkswagen was smart to delay their American introduction until the 1966 model year. But while the Fastback sedan and the Squareback wagon made it to these shores, the Notchback did not, despite the fact that Americans love the look and feel of a conventional three-box sedan. It wasn't until 1980 that VW finally offered a conventionally styled sedan with the Jetta.
The Americanization of the Rabbit. The Volkswagen factory built at Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania to make the Rabbit (Mark 1 Golf) was an example of how it's not the idea but what you do with the idea that matters. The Westmoreland factory was too big to break even making a low-cost subcompact, and that was the factory's Achilles heel. But hope of any chance of Volkswagen having success with the American-built Rabbit - produced in Pennsylvania as a hedge against swings in exchange rates between the dollar and the German mark - was dashed when the Americans running the factory decided to water down the car's German characteristics and make it more appealing to Americans who normally bought Chevrolets. The factory's managers, incidentally, came from General Motors.
As a result, interiors got gaudy, seats were flat, and the ride and handling were degraded. In a sense, Volkswagen discontinued selling the Golf/Rabbit when it began making these Malibu-redolent Rabbits, because the real thing was gone.
When former Volkswagen of America president Carl Hahn became the CEO of the parent company in 1982, he had the Westmoreland factory go back to stiffer shocks and struts and more tasteful interiors, and the GTI was added to the U.S. lineup - six years after its European debut. It wasn't enough to get enough Americans to buy the Rabbit or the second-generation Golf (produced at Westmoreland from 1984 to 1988) and keep the factory in business, but it probably saved the company's reputation in America for making driver's cars for the common people.
No Rallye Golf. In the late eighties, Volkswagen created a super-high-performance version of its humble Golf hatchback during the car's second generation. The Rallye Golf (above) was homologated to allow Volkswagen to compete in the World Rally Championship auto race, and only five thousand such cars were made. Among its goodies were a 160-horsepower supercharged engine, four-wheel-drive, electronically controlled anti-lock brakes, and fifteen-inch wheels and tires with flared fenders to accommodate them. Jim Fuller, Volkswagen of America's senior vice president, championed the Rallye Golf's importation to the United States, but he was killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988. Fuller's colleagues at Volkswagen of America, despite being impressed with the Rallye Golf when five of them were brought over to the U.S. in 1989 for evaluation, decided that it was too expensive to sell as a Volkswagen due to the brand's low-price reputation. Yet Chevrolet, General Motors' low-price brand, had at the time the most expensive GM car available with the Corvette ZR-1. And, unlike the ZR-1, the less expensive Rallye Golf seated five and had adequate cargo space.
Fifteen years later, Volkswagen of America brought over the Golf R32, the Rallye Golf's spiritual successor, and it proved that VW enthusiasts are happy to pay a premium for what is essentially a homologated version of an economy car. Americans have only recently been able to bring over Rallye Golfs themselves, thanks to a law dictating that foreign cars not for sale in the United States can only be bought overseas and transported here once they're at least 25 years old. And Rallye Golfs sell here for as much as they cost new.
Where were the minivans? Minivans aren't as hot as they used to be, thanks to sport utility vehicles, but Volkswagen either missed or screwed up opportunities to expand its minivan portfolio in America when they were popular. And had VW not done so, things might have turned out differently for minivans in general and VW minivans in particular.
The Volkswagen Sharan, the second generation of which is shown above, was developed in the mid-nineties in concert with Ford for the European market - Ford's version was called the Galaxy - and Ford somehow convinced VW to promise not to sell the Sharan in the United States and give Ford's American minivans competition, even though Ford spent a generation demonstrating its inability to produce a good minivan - which may explain why it pushed the Explorer SUV and convinced gullible, ignorant Americans to buy one. By the time Volkswagen came out with the second-generation Sharan, a vehicle developed without Ford's help, in 2010, Ford had withdrawn from the U.S. passenger minivan market and began importing its European Transit connect passenger minivan primarily to convert for commercial purposes. With SUVs gaining popularity over minivans in general, the Mark 2 Sharan never had a chance of coming here.
The Touran (above) was introduced in Europe in 2003, and it could have been a worthy competitor against the similarly executed Mazda 5, but Volkswagen of America didn't seem interested in bringing it over. The Mazda 5 has since been discontinued in favor of crossovers. Ironically, the similarly sized Ford Transit Connect is now available in passenger form.
Both the Sharan and the Touran are cool and funky, kind of like the Ford Transit Connect, and both could have set a new standard for passenger minivans in the United States, if only Volkswagen had brought them over and known how to market them. But then, Volkswagen even couldn't figure out how to sell the modern Transporter here even when sales in the minivan segment - a segment VW had created - were at their peak, and that too was discontinued. The only thing worse than Volkswagen being unable or unwilling to sell cool minivans in America would be if Volkswagen tried to sell a bland Chrysler minivan with a VW badge here.
The Volkswagen Routan. Oh, yeah, right . . .
VW, what were you thinking?
The 2011 Jetta. In an effort to make a Volkswagen that was cheap to buy, Volkswagen came out with an all-new sixth-generation Jetta (below) that was not only cheap, but cheapened. The previous Jetta had merely looked like a Japanese car, but the all-new Mexican-made Jetta that debuted for 2011 rode like one. The Chevrolet Cobalt's influence also figured in here. The trunk hinges were oversized elliptical hinges that cut into the luggage space, the interior plastic was hard to the touch, and the handling was predictable and bland, thanks to its humdrum suspension. It was as if Volkswagen had learned nothing from the Westmoreland Rabbit experience.
Improvements on the Mark 6 Jetta in subsequent model years made the car a competent and desirable performer, but it still remained a step or two behind the Golf.
Playing Polo games. The Volkswagen Polo, VW's model for people who want something one size smaller than the Golf, has never been available in the U.S. or Canada, and the substandard-but-still-okay Fox, a Polo-sized car made in Brazil, is the closest we ever got to having it. Until 2009, when, after denying its New World customers the chance to own this zippy, funky, attractive car, shown above in its fifth generation, VW announced that it was coming to North America. This was after previous promises to bring it over, but this time it looked like it was going to happen. And, as I noted earlier on this blog, I quickly started saving my money so I could be among the first on this continent to buy one. Despite earlier disappointments, this time was going to be different.
You know the rest.
In each case, Volkswagen has either tried to follow mainstream automotive trends in the United States, underestimated the potential of these products among VW loyalists and the potential to create new loyalist customers, or both. VW has repeatedly decided that what works in Europe won't work in North America - especially in the U.S. - but doesn't seem to understand that VW customers in North America have tastes more in keeping with their European brethren than with other North Americans. Instead, VW keeps aiming for bigger sales by trying to appeal to a mass audience that doesn't necessarily care for European-flavored mass-market-priced cars, and then it can't understand why such a strategy only brings in casual customers who eventually drift to another automaker for their next car purchase. The decision not to sell the ID.3 in America is yet another insult to us Volkswagen die-hards; it's a decision based on what mainstream America, not American VW customers, want. Volkswagen will never be a brand in the U.S. with the sales appeal of Chevrolet or Toyota, yet it won't settle for being only a niche brand with a loyal customer base. The irony is that Volkswagen of America executives want to make the brand relevant in the U.S. again, yet the tastes of die-hard Volkswagen loyalists don't seem to matter to them. If the standard Mark 8 Golf isn't sold in the United States, that could be the final insult for a lot of us.
Betta getta Jetta. :-(
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