Volkswagen's Worst Decisions For America

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. :-(          

Why We Can't Have Nice Things (From Volkswagen)

Volkswagen's new ID.3 electric hatchback (below), which is about the same size as the Golf, is compact, technologically advanced, incredibly futuristic, and ergonomically friendly for driver and passenger alike.  It's a Tesla for the masses.

And we in North America aren't getting it. 

If you live in North America and you want an electric VW, it's either going to be a Microbus-styled minivan (fine) or a crossover (not fine, given that crossovers always look like station wagons designed by a committee).  Volkswagen of America's current president, Scott Keogh, says he regrets his decision not to offer the ID.3 in the New World on emotional grounds - he says his company car is an e-Golf - but he's satisfied with his decision on business grounds.  He says the compact hatchback class is simply too insignificant in North America to offer a $33,000 electric car in the segment for sale at a profit or even as a loss leader.

The same, of course, goes for the Polo, a car Volkswagen has manufactured since 1975 and has never been sold in the United States or Canada.  VW came close to selling it in North America after the 2008 financial crisis and a spike in gas prices.  My fourth-generation Golf was beginning to wear out.  A new fifth-generation Polo was coming.  I was ready to buy it!  I wanted it!  But it didn't come.  Gas prices went down, and so did the demand for small cars, even though the small-car market hadn't evaporated completely.  After all, Ford had the Fiesta and General Motors had the Chevrolet Sonic.

When the sixth generation of the Polo (above) came out in late 2017, Juergen Stackmann, the guy in charge of global sales at Volkswagen, explained why the U.S. wouldn't get it. "It doesn't make too much sense for us to bring a car like this, which has the substance of a class higher, into a segment that is so price driven in America," he said, explaining that the Fiesta, the Sonic and other subcompacts of the Polo's ilk cost less, and that the Polo was simply to well-appointed and too expensive to compete against them.  Since then, the Fiesta - a nice little car but one that was notoriously unreliable - has been discontinued, as the U.S. market becomes more dominated daily by SUVs and light trucks, though the Sonic remains available going into 2020.

Volkswagen itself is concentrating more on SUVs in the U.S. (and Canada) because, we are told, Americans like SUVs.  I don't.  I hate them with a cold passion.  And long-time Volkswagen customers don't like them very much either.  The people buying Atlases and Tiguans - now comprising 54 percent of Volkswagen's American customers! - aren't VW enthusiasts.  They're flexible buyers with no brand loyalty who could just as easily have bought a Ford Explorer or a Honda Pilot.  Volkswagen is a brand for people who love to drive; SUV customers aren't engaged in driving any more than they have to be. For them, driving is just turning a steering wheel and knowing when to stop for a light.  They buy SUVs because they want a family room on wheels. Complete with a TV screen for the kiddies. >:-(

Selling SUVs to suburban rubes was fine so long as Volkswagen of America pleased its loyal customers with small, nimble, economical driver's cars - the sort of cars that made Volkswagen so beloved in America in the first place - but Volkswagen of America seems to have walked away from all that.  The ID.3 may have more technology than I want, but its small size and its thoughtful layout would be a winner for Americans and Canadians who want that sort of vehicle.  The current Polo has the room and nimbleness of my mother's Honda Fit and the performance of my Golf - with a variety of engines to choose from, many of which have three cylinders.   A lot of us would be willing to pay more for a car like the ID.3 or the Polo because we find them that desirable.  But if Scott Keogh or anyone else doesn't think VW can sell enough of these cars in America and still offset its losses with all of those bug ugly wagons it's pushing, how can we convince anyone at the company to satisfy our preferences?

And then there's the base Mark 8 Golf (above).  You know the story; I won't repeat it.  Not being able to buy a Volkswagen you want because it isn't and/or never has been available here, like a Polo or an ID.3, is bad enough.  But the idea of dropping from the U.S. lineup a car that has been available in the States for 45 years, the only car I ever bought new, once in 2000 and again in 2012 - that's too much.  I'm not asking for the Polo or the ID.3 (not anymore, or at least not for now), but I continue to lobby Volkswagen of America to keep the base Golf in the U.S. lineup (and you know already about Canada), and I've even written to Wolfsburg, urging the parent company to ensure that Volkswagen of America continues to make the base Golf available in the U.S.

Maybe we can't have the quirkier, smaller and more interesting Volkswagens not sold on this side of the pond, but we should still have the base Golf, because there are still those of us VW loyalists who prefer hatchbacks and can't afford either a Golf GTI or a Golf R.  We have to stir things up and make some damn noise.  Contact Volkswagen of America at 1-800-822-8987, 8 A.M. to 9 P.M. Eastern Time, from Monday to Friday, and let them know that we VW fans won't stand for the base Golf being dropped when the eighth generation arrives. 

Volkswagen Doesn't Do It Again

For years, I have eagerly awaited the day Volkswagen would finally offer its smallest model, the Polo, here in the United States, which seemed unlikely given the continuing preference Americans have for big cars, particularly SUVs. But recently, with the growing interest in small cars like the Honda Fit and the Toyota Yaris, not to mention the increasing talk in a "green" future of environmental friendliness, it suddenly seemed very possible, and Volkswagen seemed ready to offer it here at last.

It was yet another mirage. Up until last month, I'd been waiting to see if the Polo - now the second smallest VW in the make's lineup - would finally make it, but when it became apparent that nothing seemed to be moving on that front, I bought a new Golf instead. Two weeks after I bought my Golf, Volkswagen of America announced that it was bringing neither of its subcompacts, the Polo or the smaller Up!, to North America (the U.S. and Canada) any time soon.

The reasons for not bringing these cars boiled down to costliness and greater priorities for Volkswagen of America. Jonathan Browning, Volkswagen of America's CEO, explained that the profit margins on subcompacts are too thin for VW to import them from Europe and also too risky for VW to build them in Mexico. Right now, VW is only a bit player in the U.S. market and is trying to become once again the major import brand it was back when Lyndon Johnson was President. In order to reach its "8 in 18" goal - 800,000 cars sold per year by 2018 - VW has to spend its money and resources in upgrading its supply chains, training its dealers, and - most importantly - expanding its dealer network. Forty years ago, Volkswagen had over 1200 dealers in the United States, but intense competition from the Japanese halved that number over time. VW says it simply has too much on its plate in North America to try and sell here subcompacts that it fears would lose money when the firm is trying to make money on this continent.

There's one silver lining. The fluctuating price of fuel in the U.S. and Canada could suddenly make subcompacts desirable, and VW could theoretically "bring the Polo here tomorrow" if need be, Volkswagen product planner Rainer Michel told Car and Driver magazine. Adding at least the Polo is still a distinct possibility, but for now, the company has decided that the Golf is small enough for the New World.

I'm skeptical, of course. Back when VW was content to be a niche marketer in the U.S. and Canada, selling inexpensive European cars in North America at a time when no one else did and moving about 300,000 cars a year, the company could have easily sent over the Polo here and limited its availability to avoid having more Polos on the lots than it could sell. There is a market here in America for the Polo (the Up! ? hard to say), and VW doesn't have to sell a lot of them to satisfy it. How much money could VW lose on them, especially with the Civic/Cobalt/Corolla -inspired Jetta selling like gangbusters? Okay, so maybe I'm wrong. Maybe satisfying a small demand does cut into profitability. (The BMW-built Mini? Never mind that.)  But when I hear the latest news from Volkswagen that neither the Polo nor the Up are coming here, only to hear the promise of adding them to the lineup at a later date, I have the same reaction that I have when a new high-speed rail initiative is announced: "I've heard it all before."

My guess is that VW, having tried a subcompact model in America with the Brazilian-built Fox a quarter century ago, is far more cautious after that car - which the late Volkswagen of America executive James Fuller said could "be the appetizer for a lifetime of buying Volkswagens" - turned out to be such a sales disaster. If that's the case, then Volkswagen AG and Volkswagen of America have learned the wrong lesson. The Fox was a crude, antiquated, basic automobile. The Polo is none of those things. Furthermore, the Fox came to this country without an optional automatic transmission, because the parent company told Volkswagen of America that such an option was unnecessary - an assessment that completely missed the traditional American ambivalence toward stick shifts. The Fox was discontinued in 1993, VW's worst sales year ever in America; there hasn't been a subcompact in the American lineup since.

I have to hope that VW knows what it's doing. And in forsaking subcompacts in order to rebuild its North American network, it probably is. Volkswagen may very well have to get back to where it was in America in 1968, the Beetle's best year in the U.S., in order to satisfy smaller demands for smaller cars, and that's important after losing so much U.S. market share over the years to the Asian and domestic automakers. "What an auto company loses in the market today," Volkswagen's then-chairman Heinz Nordhoff said in 1963, "it probably can't recover in the next fifty years." Now how many years separate 2018 from 1968?

In the meantime, here's a picture of the latest iteration of the Polo, the VW we in the New World can't have.

Just Move On Up!

I'm watching Volkswagen of America with great concern. Not because of their 18 percent sales drop last month; that's part and parcel of the recession. I'm more concerned about the possibility of the German character of its cars being compromised.

While VW will continue to sell its volume model, the Golf, in the U.S. market, and will even produce a second-generation New Beetle, the American division is going more in the direction of aping the Japanese strategy to increase its presence in the American market. That is, offer cars designed more for comfort than for driving. It turns out VW's new mid-size sedan, or NMS - I'll call it the Dasher, after Volkswagen's family car from the seventies, from now on - will be bigger than the Passat, not smaller, and it will compete directly with the Toyota Camry. The Dasher, to be built in Tennessee, will be just as well-appointed as the Camry and will likely perform and handle as well as the Camry.

Dude, if you want a Camry, get a Camry. Some American car buyers prefer the more refined and more finely engineered ride of a Passat.

Then there's Volkswagen's small up! car.

The up!, originally displayed at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2007, was originally designed as a rear-engined, rear-drive small car in the spirit of the original Beetle. (No aircooling, though.) But because of concerns about the possible tail-happy behavior of a rear-engine car, and also to cut costs, the engine was moved to the front for the production version, driving the front wheels. Some wags have even suggested that VW erred on the side of conservatism in deference to the American market. The up! had been designed with the possibility of offering it in the U.S. in mind but Volkswagen hasn't committed to such an idea completely out of fear that it might be too small for American tastes.

If Volkswagen had had the same attitude toward the American market in the fifties that it has now, the Beetle might never had been sold here. Volkswagen didn't just change people's minds in the United States about foreign cars; the German company changed people's minds here about small cars, and it got Americans to appreciate the economy and frugality of a small, basic car like the Beetle. Plus, the taut suspension and stiff shocks the Beetle had and most of its watercooled, front-engine successors have had changed many American attitudes about how a car should ride.

The cheap gasoline of the past thirty years, alas, re-established American preferences for bigger and softer cars, and Toyota and Honda have been all too happy to follow suit with their ever bigger and softer Camry and Accord models, respectively. To be fair, their small Corolla and Civic models continue to be perennial favorites in America, though they're rather unexciting. That said, American-style engineering and Japanese banality are not what Volkswagen customers demand from their cars. VW became a part of the American landscape by letting the market come to them. I understand the need for car companies to respond to market demands, but there's a reason I'm a Volkswagen owner and chose a Golf over the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic. I like driver's cars. If you just want a car to get from one place to another, you buy a Japanese or domestic car. If you want to enjoy the trip, you buy a Volkswagen. Will we still enjoy the trip once Volkswagen tries to Americanize or Nipponize its U.S. product? Volkswagen of America president Stefan Jacoby insists that the Dasher and the smaller subcompact positioned below the Golf - to be called the Polo but having little in common with the European model of the same name - will be Volkswagens in every sense of the brand name, but I'm skeptical.

I still have bad feelings about the Americanized Rabbit built in Pennsylvania in the early eighties.

As for the up!, which may actually get here in 2012, there should be a market for it here once gas prices go up again. (Oh, they will, man , they will!) And as far as I'm concerned . . .

Heck, I'd buy one! :-)

Updates

Some updates on stories I've posted here:

Volkswagen of America president Stefan Jacoby recently spoke to Crain's Automotive news and confirmed that a model smaller than the coming sixth-generation Golf will be added to Volkswagen's U.S. and Canadian lineups. It won't be the Polo that's now on sale, but it will be related to it. It should be something like a real Polo, in my humble opinion, as long as it's a real Volkswagen. The Golf will continue to be priced as an entry-level car in the U.S./Canadian market, under $19,000, as VW doesn't have its cheaper SEAT and Škoda brands available here even as the VW brand becomes a medium-priced brand back home.

Meanwhile, the new midsized VW to be built in Tennessee will be between the Jetta and Passat, and go more more directly against the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord.

Also, on Patrick Little's Family Web site: Much of the information contained on that since-discontinued page has since been transferred to Family Bandstand at www.familybandstand.com. It's a more streamlined site, and updates are available. If you've seen my record review site for the British band, you need to go to this site as well. :-)

Polo Play

A few months ago I reported that Volkswagen may bring their Polo model to the United States and Canada. Are they? The answer is yes . . . and no. Volkswagen wants to add an entry-level car for the U.S./Canadian market, but while the car we get will be called the Polo, it will likely be a Polo in name only. Instead of the authentic European model VW fans in North America have been craving for, we're likely to get a tall car like the Honda Fit, and possibly a small trunked sedan, with the Polo badge.

I'll reserve judgment on VW's proposed entry-level car for this market until I see the darn thing. In the meantime, I'm glad the sixth-generation Golf is coming soon. :-)