VW Run Amarok

Somewhere along the way, the presidency of Volkswagen of America became a revolving door.  And so, apparently, did Volkswagen of America's priorities for its product lineup.

Volkswagen AG announced a "major overhaul" in both leadership and product planning.  Kjell Gruner s out as president of Volkswagen of America, and a fellow named Marco Schubert - not to be confused with American swimming-team coach Mark Schubert - is taking his place.  Gone are the days when a Volkswagen of America president could last for over a decade like the late, great Stuart Perkins, who took over from his mentor Carl Hahn in 1965 as the Beetle was about to peak and oversaw the introduction of VW's watercooled cars in 1975.  Gruner had only been the leader of Volkswagen of America since December 2024.

The product lineup plans Schubert plans to pursue per the desires of Wolfsburg brass are even ominous.  VW wants to add a pickup to the North American lineup, like the Amarok model (below).  It will likely be built in VW's Tennessee factory.

We likely won't get the Amarok itself.  We might get something even uglier.  There are rumors of a joint venture on a pickup truck between VW and Ford.  Not good.  Ford pickups are hideous.  

As if that weren't bad enough, VW wants to add a full-size SUV.  To respond to the inevitable point that VW already has the Atlas, the company wants something even bigger.  So not good.

Left unmentioned was whether the base Golf will still be re-introduced to the U.S. and Canada once production of the eighth-generation Golf begins in Mexico.  Also left unmentioned was whether the Jetta - the current generation of which is entering its ninth model year this fall - will continue.  Gruner said that both cars represent the soul of Volkswagen for VW enthusiasts, and I would add that the Jetta has been one of the bestselling European cars in the United States for decades.  It is as yet unclear whether Schubert is simpatico with Gruner's position.  Gruner's position no longer matters; he is leaving the company completely.  

If there's any silver lining in this development (and I'm stretching it here), it's that Schubert is coming over from Audi, a VW division that never forgot how to make performance cars, so he might actually favor the gambit to keep the Golf and the Jetta in the North American lineup and bring back the base Golf model.  Just don't ask Marco for a Polo (which has gone electric, the new ID version having just gone on sale in Europe), or any other model true to Volkswagen's heritage, because the brand is undoubtedly doubling down on a strategy to Americanize the brand to pander to American tastes to increase its American market share.  

This is the worst watering down of Volkswagen in the U.S. since 1978, when VW's Westmoreland factory in Pennsylvania began producing "Malibunnies" - Rabbits so Americanized in terms of trim and performance that it had more in common with the Chevrolet Malibu than with Golfs back in Europe.  If Volkswagen keeps going down this path, it won't be Volkswagen anymore.  Not in the New World, anyway.

El Ocho Vocho

I speculated earlier that the eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf, unavailable in base form in the United States and Canada and unavailable in any form in Mexico, might be available in base form in the New World once VW's Mexican factory in Puebla took over production of the venerable hatchback from the home factory in Wolfsburg.  Volkswagen of America president Kjell Gruner spoke on that possibility for the first time ever this past week.

Gruner has become aware that Americans have been asking for more variations of the Golf because the high-performance GTI and R editions are increasingly out of reach - a far cry from the more affordable Golf that Americans remember debuting in 1975 in the States as the Rabbit, when it only cost $2,999 - $18,564 in today's dollars.  The entry-level GTI currently starts at twice that much.  Americans who love Volkswagen still appreciate the practicality and versatility of a hatchback, and they - we - have always been VW's most loyal customers.  With only the Jetta and the Tiguan within reach for many if not most American VW customers, Gruner is certainly interested in reintroducing the base Golf here once production of the car commences in Puebla. The lower costs of production in Mexico - the whole reason the Mark 8 Golf is being made there in the first place - will make such a move possible.

Maybe.  Because right now, cars made in Mexico are subject to a 25 percent tariff, which would make it not impossible to offer the Golf here but would certainly make it difficult.  The profit margins on affordable cars are so thin that it's hard to make much money on them, given the costs that go into developing the cars have been rising thanks to more regulations and more tech.  And Volkswagen of America no longer has larger midsize cars like the Passat and probably not enough SUVs to offset losses on affordable-car sales.  So Gruner would undoubtedly like to see the Mexico tariff reduced to 15 percent, which would put it in line with the import taxes on cars imported from elsewhere.  Will that happen?  That's anyone's guess.

But, given Gruner's desire to keep the Golf and Jetta available in the United States as the souls of the brand, it seems like the base Golf could finally arrive here after all.

Would I buy one?  At this point, probably not.  I've invested lots of money to keep my sixth-generation Golf as new, and I'm wary of getting a new Golf that has more tech than I know what to do with.  I may not want a Mark 8 Golf, but I'd like the opportunity to buy one.  Or, as women always like to say about boyfriends, "I don't want to marry you, but I want you to ask me."  I want Volkswagen to offer me the chance to buy a 2027 Golf in base form, even if I ultimately decide against it.  

But if I can get an eTSI hybrid like the one I rented in Germany last summer, I might be tempted . . ..

Thinking Small Again?

I need a break from the current news cycle. I'd like to talk instead about one of my favorite topics - Volkswagen.

Kjell Gruner, president and CEO of Volkswagen of America (which marked its seventy-first anniversary yesterday),  assured die-hard Volkswagen enthusiasts that, despite the fact that five out of six Volkswagen vehicles sold in the U.S. are sport utility vehicles, the Golf and the Jetta will remain in VW's American lineup.  Gruner called them the two compacts the soul of the brand.

That  is all good and fine - at least it sounds all good and fine - but, last time I checked, the base version of Volkswagen's eighth-generation Golf (above) is still unavailable, as the current Golf - available here and in Canada in GTI and R form only - concludes its fifth model year in the New World, while the current Jetta (below), the seventh-generation model, has been on the market for eight years with the occasional facelift and upgrading.

I guess that's better than nothing, as the 2020s have mostly been a nothing decade for Volkswagen enthusiasts in the U.S. and Canada.  The decade began with the lack of a modern Beetle (and no convertible), the decision to drop the base Golf from the New World, and a pandemic that made Volkswagens difficult to produce thanks to supply-chain disruptions.  It continued with the termination of the Passat and the debut of the incredibly boring Taos compact SUV.  And while Europeans continue to get new and exciting electric vehicles, we have only gotten the ID.4 SUV and the ID. Buzz minivan - the latter taking a break for 2026 because VW dealers still have plenty of 2025 models in stock, because it's too damn expensive.  The Passat-sized ID.7 electric sedan was canceled when it became apparent that U.S. government support for EVs was fleeting, and it will likely remain unavailable even if a Democrat is elected President in 2028.  The Golf GTI and Golf R remain too expensive for many VW customers, leaving the Jetta as our only recourse.  

And the biggest news for 2026 is a second-generation Atlas full-size SUV. That's what Volkswagen highlighted at the New York Auto Show in 2026. And that was another reason for me not to bother with the show this year, frankly.  

For the time being, the Jetta will return Volkswagen to its roots.  The car will be improved under the hood and under the floor with updated engines, fuel injectors, shocks and suspension as well as inside the car with better ambient lighting and controls, while the styling, already more conservative than a Heritage Foundation policy paper, will remain unchanged.  In other words, it will be how the Beetle evolved in the U.S. for thirty years.  Volkswagen of America ought to reprise its ad for the 1962 Volkswagen showing a blank page and explaining the car's non-visual improvements to sell next year's Jetta.

But it might not be our only realistic choice for long.  With production costs rising in Germany, and with an all-electric ninth-generation Golf (which, like the ID.3, will likely be forbidden fruit in These States) still a couple of years away, Volkswagen is actually planning to produce the current Golf in Mexico for the European market.  That's like Ford producing the Mustang for in Japan for Americans.   But Volkswagen deems it necessary to reduce production costs and make the Wolfsburg factory more devoted to EVs. 

Now bear with me here.  Part of the reason the base Golf was dropped from the North American market with the debut of the eighth-generation car (that does not only include Canada, it includes Mexico, and Mexico doesn't get any eighth-generation Golfs, not even the high-performance variants) was because VW had decided to produce the Mark 8 Golf exclusively in Wolfsburg and not in the Mexican factory at Puebla.  Puebla had been sourcing the Mark 7 Golf to North America because it was cheaper than exporting them to North America from Wolfsburg, as had been the case with the fifth- and sixth-generation cars.  But with the shift of Golf production back to Germany, restricting the Golf to only its high-performance variants in North America was the only thing that made sense to VW from an economic standpoint, considering the base Golf's lack of popularity in North America beyond VW's die-hard customer base.  So if the eighth-generation Golf is going to be made in Mexico for Europeans, and the Golf GTI and Golf R will be made for North America in Puebla as well . . . why not bring the base Golf back to North America, when it will inevitably be cheaper to make?  VW is playing the same game with SUVs that every other automaker doing business on this continent is playing - that is, make 'em bigger and more expensive.  But if Kjell Gruner really does want VW to remain true to its roots, maybe, just maybe, the base Golf can return to North American dealerships.

Volkswagen ought to consider taking advantage of this opportunity to bring the base Golf back to North America while continuing with the Jetta.  Both cars are economical and easy on gas, and at a time when affordability and a possible oil crisis are the top issues of the day, having affordable small cars available is good for Volkswagen, just as it can only be good for Toyota, Honda and Hyundai.   Admittedly, we wouldn't get the array of engine choices for the base Golf that Europeans get and have gotten for decades, but maybe VW might want to consider returning to the hybrid market in light of  U.S. transportation policy backtracking on EVs.  I drove the base Mark 8 Golf with an eTSI hybrid setup in Germany, and it performed as well as my Mark 6 Golf.  I loved it.  Former Volkswagen of America CEO Scott Keogh famously said that Volkswagen stood for affordability, and fuel-efficient, inexpensive compact cars are always the way for Volkswagen to go.

Come on, Volkswagen of America, think small again.

(Oh yeah, I'm still keeping my Mark 6 Golf for the foreseeable future.)

Volkswagen of America For 2024

 In a word, this is pathetic.

Officially,  Volkswagen's U.S. lineup is down to ten models with half of them being sport utility vehicles. (Various trim levels inflate the number of models to sixteen.)  In reality, it's down to eight models with five of them being SUVs, because the Web page counts the Jetta twice - once for the base model and again for the GLI - and also counts the Golf twice - once for the GTI and again for the R, with - of course - no base Golf for Americans anymore. 

This is Volkswagen's weakest U.S. lineup in over thirty years.  And the European character of the brand - small, economical, taut ride, sophisticated handling - has mostly been watered down in pursuit of the objective Herbert Diess set for the U.S. before he stepped down as CEO of Volkswagen AG - to sell American-style vehicles to VW's American customer base.  As a result, five out of six VWs sold in the States are SUVs.  This is and remains a slap in the face to loyal American VW customers who bought Volkswagens for decades simply and primarily because they were not American-style vehicles - because they specifically were the sort of fun compact runabouts you'd see in pictures of Parisian or Roman streetscapes. 

Yes, Europe has Volkswagen SUV models we don't get, but more importantly, Europeans get the base Golf, the Polo, the ID.3, four station wagons, and a choice of vans ranging from the Touran to the Transporter.  No up! anymore, Volkswagen upped! the last one from its factory this past October.  (I'll elaborate on that in a later post.)  But the European Volkswagen customer still has twice as many choices as the American customer, even though they don't have the Jetta anymore.  But Europeans, never big fans of trunks, hardly miss it.

Bad, bad, very bad.

Well, not entirely.  There are bright spots in Volkswagen of America's future.  The ID. Buzz is coming soon, and Volkswagen's first van for this market in over a decade will soon be followed by the midsize ID.7 sedan, an ostensible replacement for the Passat.  But if you want the sort of small, compact, no-nonsense car that the Beetle or the Golf had always been, you're either going to have to buy a late-model Golf or modern Beetle used or get a new Jetta before VW gives up on that model as well.  Me, I'm going to keep my base Mark 6 Golf, now soldiering into its thirteenth year (the longest I've ever owned a car), on the road for as long as I can. 

Return of the Son of Monster Wagon

Shortly after Volkswagen of America CEO Scott Keogh declared that a backlash against SUVs - henceforth to be called "monster wagons" on this blog - was imminent, Volkswagen of America itself released a survey that apparently contradicts Keogh's prediction.

As noted in an earlier post, a survey taken by Volkswagen of America in September 2019, the findings of which were released this month (December 2019), revealed that people who buy monster wagons, like the VW Atlas (above), not only love them, they plan to stick with that style when considering future car purchases.  Over nine in ten owners of monster wagons rank them as the best cars for the money, and 87 percent say they do not plan to buy another style of vehicle in the future.  Ninety-four percent of them feel more confident when driving one, and 90 percent of parents agree that they will continue to own a monster wagon for as far as they an see - which is forever, considering that they can see very well behind the wheel of one, blocking the views of us sedan and hatchback drivers in the process.

Even more frightening, owners of monster wagons regard their vehicles as living rooms on wheels -  more than eight out of ten parents say that they're perfect places for family discussions (hey, lady, stop lecturing Junior about his girlfriend and pay attention to the road, and so what if she's not of your religion?) and that it creates a new space for family time (come on, people, you can't play Yahtzee in a moving car!). Conclusion: Monster wagons are a bigger threat to what passes for American civilization than previously thought.

Oh yeah, here are other reasons why Americans love their monster wagons. Men appreciate the comfortable seating for their fat pantloads, while women appreciate the improved safety in a collision with, say, a Toyota Yaris, which is going to be on the losing end in a crash with a Lincoln Navigator.

"This survey confirms that our current portfolio of SUVs aligns with what consumers are prioritizing here in the U.S.," Hein Schafer, Senior Vice President, Product Marketing and Strategy for Volkswagen of America, said in response to the survey.  "All of our SUVs rank high on independent measures of comfort, standard safety features and passenger space within their classes.:  Schafer added that Volkswagen of America is "focused on those priorities as we develop new entries like our upcoming subcompact SUV."

Contradictions in terms notwithstanding ("subcompact SUV"?), it's clear to see which direction Volkswagen is going in America, and that makes it more difficult for me to push for the inclusion of the base eighth-generation Golf hatchback in the brand's U.S. lineup (which I'm still up to; please visit my other blog).  But what can I do?  Just look at how these auto companies have brainwashed gullible, unsuspecting, stupid Americans into buying these ugly behemoths and pumping up their profit margins.  Leaving Volkswagen aside, I'm appalled by all of the automobile manufacturers that concentrate solely on monster wagons and their evil relations, pickup trucks, in their commercials.  A commercial for the Ford Escape encourages people to by one and take it into the woods to chop down an evergreen for a Christmas tree because, although you could go to a tree lot or garden center in town, you have a four-wheel drive vehicle and you have to set an example to set for your children.  Right, an example of environmental degradation by chopping down your own Christmas tree at will as an example, even though Christmas trees sold in lots and garden centers are responsibly grown on Christmas tree farms.  Or the Chevrolet commercial advertising the Christmastime employee discount offer to people who don't work for Chevrolet - not one vehicle in the commercial is a Malibu sedan or a Bolt electric hatchback!

And don't get me started on Land Rover's commercial showing Olympic skiing champion Mikaela Shiffrin using a Range Rover to get to the top of a mountain so she can go downhill skiing - how is she going to get back to her Range Rover?

The silver lining in this survey VW conducted is that it focused on present owners of monster wagons, not owners of other types of cars who are planning to buy monster wagons in the future.  And people who buy monster wagons may be a majority, but when you look at what people own, a cursory census of the American highway will reveal many older sedans and hatchbacks still on the road - some dating back to the last century - as many Americans hold onto their cars longer in Donald Trump's precarious economy.  But the scary thing about monster wagons is that they do account for a majority of new-vehicle sales and seem to have become entrenched in the ten-day auto sales reports; thus, they've become a permanent fixture on the road.  And voting Trump out of office is not going to change that, given that most Americans tend to be morons no matter who's running the country.  

But hey, soccer moms love their monster wagons, and pretty soon they'll all look like Lily Munster or Creepella Gruesome (Morticia Addams had Lurch to chauffeur her), and I don't know of any wooden stake or silver bullet that can kill these ugly four-wheeler gas guzzlers.  When it comes to the American road, it's clearly a monster wagon driver's world; the rest of us are unable to see the road up ahead in it.   

Bogeying the Golf

The Volkswagen Golf has been a hard sell in the United States since, back in its days with the Rabbit name, it gained a reputation for less-than-stellar reliability and Americans realized that they didn't really like hatchbacks once falling gas prices meant they didn't have to buy one. So my efforts to get Volkswagen of America to sell the eighth generation of the base Golf here are going to be tough - especially since I'm only one person and it's difficult to get anyone to join me.  The VW enthusiasts only care about the GTI or R, which are coming, and casual VW customers are too busy checking out Tiguans and Atlases.  And it turns out that Volkswagen may be undercutting its own product - not just in hatchback-hating America, but in Europe in other markets.  Its Tiguan SUV is actually gaining in  popularity in the Old Country, as is the European T-Cross SUV, and Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess is gambling more on electric vehicles, which threatens to challenge sales of the traditional, fossil-fuel-powered Golf.  And the inclusion of hybrids in the Golf lineup itself in Europe has muddied the waters further for the model, as evidenced by the very special Golf you see below.  

This is the all-new, eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf GTE, and as its name suggests, it's a plug-in hybrid high-performance model, and it may actually upstage the time-honored GTI.  Its 1.4-liter gasoline engine and 13-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery setup pack combine to produce 242 horsepower - more than the Mark 7 GTI produces - and its 0-60 time is supposed to eclipse the outgoing seventh-generation hot hatch.  The seventh-generation GTE was more of a sideline for VW than this one appears to be.  Rumors of the coming Mark 8 GTI's power are just that - rumors - and, though it's likely that the next GTI will be more powerful than the new GTE, the GTE suggests where Volkswagen is headed.  It's hoping to accentuate its electric-vehicle and hybrid portfolio in the coming decades as climate change becomes more of a reality and VW enthusiasts may start feeling guilty (you can't spell "guilty" without "GTI") over polluting the air with their hot hatches.

All of this suggests that VW's product is in flux as less traditional vehicles like SUVs and electric cars pick up more of the slack.  Hannover-based equity analyst Frank Schwope even said as much to Fortune magazine. "The Golf is falling behind and risks becoming obsolete, on the one hand due to the trend towards SUVs like the Tiguan and T-Cross and on the other with Diess betting so heavily on electric vehicles," he said.

So, VW seems to be undermining the very highway the Golf rides on.  But the Golf, still popular in Europe, isn't done yet - rumor has it that the possibility of Volkswagen of America president Scott Keogh adding the GTE to the U.S. lineup has been floated, though I'll believe it when I see it - and I still think the base version would do just fine if it's offered in the States.  American VW loyalist customers still regard the Golf as the embodiment of Volkswagen in the post-air-cooled age, and it showed in sales of the seventh-generation Golf in 2015, its first full calendar year of availability in the U.S. - 19,257 base Golfs were driven off the lots of American dealerships that year.  And though only 5,012 base Golfs have been sold in the U.S. so far for 2019, that may be due to a combination of the car's aging design, lack of advertising, and very limited availability - take it from someone who was considering a 2019 Golf and tried to find a dealership that had at least one (but I finally got the stalling problem fixed on my 2012 Golf, so I'm good).  As they did in 2015, American VW fans who want a quintessential European hatchback but don't want to cough up extra scratch for a GTI or an R will gladly purchase a new Mark 8 Golf the second it's available . . . if Keogh decides to offer it.  He hasn't made the final decision on that, and so the fight to bring it here goes on, thanks to my Facebook page.  

And it would be, to use Keogh's pet phrase, cool as hell if he did bring over the Mark 8 GTE while he was at it.  It would be the ultimate electric bunny. ;-)  

Great Scott!

Here is a production version of the eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf, the world premiere of which is due next Thursday in Wolfsburg.  (The picture was nabbed by a resourceful chap in Slovakia.)  And whether or not the United States gets it in its VW lineup is still up in the air.  That was the message from Volkswagen of America as recently as this past Friday (October 12). 

The decision on that question, as always, rests with one man and one man only - Scott Keogh, Volkswagen of America's president and chief executive officer.  Other VW managers can persuade him one way or the other, but the final call is his alone to make.

Keogh (above) has been CEO of Volkswagen of America for a year now, and it remains to be seen how successful he will ultimately be in his job.  He has tough shoes to fill, given some of the legends among his predecessors, such as Carl Hahn, who built up the Volkswagen brand in North America in the early sixties (and later became chairman of Volkswagen AG, the only former Volkswagen of America president to achieve that position), J. Stuart Perkins, who succeeded Hahn and led Volkswagen to its best years during the era of the Beetle and later oversaw the transition to watercooled VW models, and Bill Young, who saved Volkswagen from oblivion in America with his insistence of better quality control from the factory in Mexico that began supplying cars to the U.S. and Canada in the early nineties.  Keogh has a tall order; he's faced with the task of keeping Volkswagen commercially successful in an era of sport-utility vehicles while having to balance that with the desires of America VW die-hards who prefer the traditional small hatchbacks and sedans that Volkswagen has long offered.

Right now, Keogh is pushing for more SUV models and even a pickup truck in Volkswagen's U.S. lineup, in order to appeal to those buyers (who make up seven out of ten new-vehicle customers), even as he has to decide on the base Golf's future in a market where hatchbacks are spectacularly unpopular but where loyal Volkswagen customers demand such a car because of their own tastes, which are outside the mainstream.  Keogh has talked up SUVs in the motoring press like a disc jockey talks up the latest Ariana Grande record on pop radio, but he's made it clear that hatchbacks won't be cut from the U.S. lineup entirely.  But which hatchbacks will stay?  He has sent signals that only the Golf GTI and Golf R, the Golf's performance variants, will stay in the U.S. market because he still wants to cater to VW "enthusiasts" - suggesting that no one could get enthusiastic or excited over a base Golf hatchback.  (I happen to be a VW  enthusiast who does.)  On the other hand, Keogh has also hinted that the base Mark 8 Golf is assured, despite the fact that it hasn't been confirmed.   

"We will be launching the Golf VIII," Keogh told Automobile magazine in May 2019, "which will be the next-gen and it will have a GTI, so we're 100 percent on board [with that model]. But right now the GTI is going to stay GTI. And the [eighth-generation version of that] will come, and it's going to be as cool as hell."

Koegh has already disappointed many VW enthusiasts in America by canceling the Golf wagon and giving a thumbs-down to the idea of the Golf-sized ID.3 electric hatchback for sale in North America.  (We're getting an electric crossover instead.) While I understand Keogh's desire to sell the more popular car styles to keep Volkswagen in business in America, I hope he remembers the loyalists - those of us who still bought VWs when consumer magazines told us not to, bought them during the depths of VW's misfortune in the early nineties, and stood by the brand even after the diesel scandal broke.  I hope he recognizes, as I told him in three separate letters (full disclosure), that the Golf embodies Volkswagen in the watercooled age and that the base car should remain in the U.S. lineup, with only enough cars for those who want it.  So maybe I should be happy that Keogh is trying to add a pickup truck to Volkswagen s North American lineup; a vehicle like that would certainly offset losses on every base Golf VW sells to loyal American customers who want the same car their German (and Canadian) counterparts get to buy.

My gut instinct is that Koegh would rather not take the base Golf out of the U.S. market, but he is aware of how poorly they sell not just against SUVs and sedans, but maybe even other hatchbacks, and his decision will ultimately be made based on the numbers.  If he can't justify keeping the base Golf in America, he'll drop it.  If he can find a way to include it in the U.S. lineup going forward, he'll keep it. 

That said, I leave you with this.  Scott Keogh says he wants to make Volkswagen matter in the U.S. again, though it's always mattered to the VW loyalists here.  So, a lot of us will be watching every move he makes with baited breath.  Especially his next one.    

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. 

From Small Quantities to Thinking Small

This past January marked the seventieth anniversary of the first time Volkswagens were offered for sale in the United States, thanks to an enterprising Dutch car importer named Ben Pon (left, below).

Pon failed to interest any dealers stateside to take a Volkswagen franchise despite having been successful at selling Beetles in the Netherlands, the first country outside Germany where VWs were available.  In 1949, Volkswagen sold two Beetles in the United States.

In 1950, Volkswagen sold even more of them in the U.S. :-D

By 1959, Volkswagen had set up an official network of dealers, with its U.S. headquarters working out of a building in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, just across the river from Manhattan.  VW sales were respectable, with minimal advertising and word of mouth moving the metal, but Volkswagen of America's recently installed president, Carl Hahn, wanted to sell more cars, and so he decided to hire an advertising agency to launch a coordinated campaign.

And so it was sixty years ago that the most memorable car ad campaign in history was launched. :-)

While other car ads of the late 1950s presented incredibly glamorous illustrations and superlative copy to promote the product from Detroit's Big Three and the smaller domestic automakers still around then, Doyle Dane Bernbach, the small New York ad agency that Hahn employed, opted for a quieter, more subtle approach to selling cars.  Knowing that the Volkswagen Beetle was not glamorous, was not flashy, and - to most people - was not even pretty, the ad campaign it created preferred to be honest about the car.  It wasn't big or glamorous.  It was small and slow without many amenities.  But Doyle Dane Bernbach capitalized on the Beetle's strengths, particularly how its four-cylinder engine and its size made it economical to run and maintain.  Its beetle shape was streamlined and simple.  It was a car that made small a virtue in a country then (as now) obsessed with bigness.

The Doyle Bane Bernbach ads even acknowledged that the Volkswagen wasn't a perfect car, ironically underscoring Volkswagen's commitment to quality and reliability.  The "Lemon" ad reminded buyers that the factory in Wolfsburg was prone to making a defective car but that none of these lemons would ever make it to a VW showroom.  And the ads turned the VW's unchanging appearance - at a time when visible model-year changes from Detroit were commonplace - into a plus, saying that the changes VW made annually were under the skin and designed to make a VW run better and last longer, not look better or even look different.

Sure, GM or Ford might give their long, low-slung coupes a two-tone paint job.  But unless a Beetle owner was willing to do it himself on his car, you'd never see a two-tone Beetle anywhere.

Volkswagen made fun of itself in these ads for daring to offer such an ugly car.  But heck, VW was proud not to be what Ray Davies would call a "dedicated follower of fashion."  When it did make a beautiful car, as it did with the Type 3 Fastback, VW ads expressed mock concern about the car ruining the brand's image.

And yes, a Volkswagen was slow.  VW had no problem admitting that.

Because a slow car that gets you where you want to go is better than a fast car that breaks down a lot.

Volkswagen's ads were honest, simple and direct, communicating to the prospective car buyer of its features and how it provided reliable, economical transportation in a quiet, conversational manner.  The font, Franklin Gothic, was as low-key and as subtle as the copy, which was written with intelligence and wit by Doyle Dane Bernbach copywriters Julian Koenig and George Lois, who were always mindful to tell people what a Volkswagen was and show awareness of what it wasn't.

Volkswagen ads explained how the engine was cooled by air, highlighted the available traction from the rear-engine/rear-rive configuration, and explained the various improvements under the skin.  You knew what you were getting when you bought a Volkswagen.

Volkswagen mostly eschewed gimmicks like celebrity endorsements, though one memorable ad featuring basketball star Wilt Chamberlain showed him trying - and failing - to get inside a Beetle, the message being that while the Beetle was too small for Chamberlain, it was still big enough for most people. 

(Aside: Doyle Dane Bernbach retained a touch of that wit even in the watercooled age, when Volkswagen began to lose its way in the United States, when it brought back Chamberlain to show how he could fit in a Volkswagen Rabbit.)

Carl Hahn was pleased with his choice of Doyle Dane Bernbach for the Volkswagen campaign.  He found the ad men, including agency boss Bill Bernbach, to be people of integrity.  The Volkswagen Beetle ad campaign remains the gold standard for automobile advertising, both for the sales they generated and for their own refreshing honesty.  To show here even all of the best ads from the campaign would take too much bandwidth.

Today, Volkswagen doesn't want us to think small.  It's encouraging us to "drive bigger" - not drive a bigger car, like its SUVs, but a bigger idea . . . electric cars that return Volkswagen to the honesty and economy that the Beetle once offered, with a commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and admission of VW's guilt for the TDI scandal and a sincere desire to move on and redeem itself.  It's all very noble.  But, as vehicles get bigger and become more pretentious and less about getting from one place to another, I look at the old Doyle Dane Bernbach ads for Volkswagen and realize how thinking small was and could still be a big idea.

No Golf For Us?

A recent report from Automotive News seems to have confirmed earlier rumors that the next generation - the eighth - of the standard Volkswagen Golf will not come to the United States and maybe not even Canada.  Volkswagen of America is said to have definitively told its dealers that the standard Golf and the Golf wagon are being dropped from the lineup here.

The Mark 8 Golf, shown above at a McDonald's (yes, they have McDonald's over in Europe!) during testing, will be made exclusively in Germany, whereas U.S.-spec Golfs of the seventh generation have been made in Mexico.  It's no secret that Mexican-built Volkswagens cost less to bring over here than German-built VWs - no transoceanic shipping, lower labor costs - and with the GTI accounting for 42 percent of Golf sales in America, it's worth it for Volkswagen of America to import it, but after a brief enthusiasm in the sales charts for the base Golf when it debuted in America in the summer of 2014, sales of that car have plummeted, and Volkswagen of America appears to have decided that the car is so expensive, it's not worth bringing over from Wolfsburg.  And Trump's threatened tariffs on all imported cars isn't doing anyone any favors. 

However, the base Mark 8 Golf  could still come to the U.S., because it turns out that it's the best-selling Volkswagen in Canada. That's right, even Canadians like the base Golf better than we do.  But a source close to Volkswagen of America told Automotive News that "if VW Canada can make a business case for the car, it could continue in the U.S. and Canada."  Continued imports of the base Golf to Canada, therefore, would make in convenient for Volkswagen of America to offer the same car south of the 49th parallel.  Volkswagen of America and Volkswagen Canada have traditionally acted in concert with each other, so this is a positive development in an otherwise depressing story.

In the meantime, I chatted with someone online at Volkswagen of America to ask about this story and to express my displeasure with the mere suggestion of canceling the base Golf in America.  She assured me that the 2020 and 2021 model year lineups in America have not been finalized yet and that this media report is wrong.  So there's still hope for the base Golf in America for the eighth generation.  To all my fellow Golf fans, I urge you to keep your fingers crossed day and night that it comes and also go here to contact someone at Volkswagen of America online, or call Volkswagen of America at 1-800-822-8987, 8 A.M. to 9 P.M. Eastern Time, from Monday to Friday, to urge that the base Golf be continued in VW's U.S. lineup. 

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.

Volkswagen of America Does It Again

Volkswagen of America is once again preparing to get a new president. The current leader, Stefan Jacoby, is set to become the new CEO at Volvo, replacing Stephen Odell. This news came as a surprise to many dubbers in America, because Jacoby had done a great deal in the previous three years to keep Volkswagen on the right path in the United States.

After hitting rock bottom in America in the early nineties, Volkswagen was able to recover by producing a modern Beetle which Americans bought in droves and coming out with excellent redesigns of the Golf and Jetta in the latter part of that decade, as well as a new Passat that unexpectedly gave they Toyota Camry and Honda Accord serious competition. Sales peaked at at over 350,000 units in 2001 before falling by 37 percent over the next five years, although the drop was not as nearly as severe as the 64 percent U.S. sales decline between 1971 and 1976. Jacoby was able to bring about some changes, keeping Volkswagen's U.S. market share steady and getting VW to build a new plant in Tennessee to build an American replacement for the Passat while setting a goal to increase VW's U.S. sales to 800,000 within the next decade.

Jacoby made a few missteps, though, mainly by blessing us with the Routan minivan and refusing to bring over the all-new Scirocco. Some VW fans have even questioned the drum brakes and torsion beam rear suspension chosen for the new Jetta, which they fear will soften the ride. It is true that sales have slowly slipped from 2006 to 2009, but VW actually increased market share last year due to an overall slump in the market caused by the recession that began in December 2007 and is still very much in progress.

Jacoby wasn't a "car guy," someone who knew the products inside and out and focused more on the cars than on the marketing. He did a decent job in keeping the ship steady, but the next Volkswagen of America boss has to get more aggressive. VW fans have a long wish list of cars they want to see (bring the Polo! bring the Polo!) and while it's nice for VW to have mass-market products like the newly redesigned Jetta and the as-yet unnamed mid-size sedan to be built in Tennessee and have the mid-size sedan (I call it the Dasher) be aimed at Camry and Accord buyers, it's important that we dubbers get a say in the product line. We don't buy VWs because they're like Toyotas or Hondas. We don't buy VWs because they're mainstream cars. We buy them because they're nothing of the sort.

As VW's old mid-eighties slogan goes, "It's not a car. It's a Volkswagen." And as that decorative license plate says, "It's not a car. It's a cult." :-D

I don't know how Jacoby - who had hoped to lead VW's Škoda brand in Europe - will fare at Volvo. Whoever replaces him at Volkswagen of America will have his or her hands full, though.

I . . . Can Drive . . . 55

Volkswagen of America celebrates its fifty-fifth annversary today.

Founded on April 19, 1955, Volkswagen of America was created to standardize sales and service of its products in the United States.

Originally headquartered in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, it later moved to Troy, Michigan, and then to Herndon, Virginia.

Here's a picture of my 2000 Volkswagen Golf, which I offer in celebration. I bought it new, and as of May of this year, I'll have had it for a decade. :-)