Here comes VW, American-style

As the Volkswagen brand takes aim at 800,000 annual U.S. sales by 2018, it plans to offer more vehicles and features targeted specifically at American buyers, top executives said in interviews with Automotive News.

According to KHABAR KHODRO, The strategy is a big change for the brand, which for decades sent cars designed for Europe to the United States and shrugged off complaints that they were ill suited to the local market and scored poorly on quality and dependability surveys.

The VW brand hasn't sold more than 300,000 vehicles here since 2003. Last year VW sold 256,830 vehicles in the United States.

But the United States has taken on new importance to the VW Group, which hopes to pass Toyota Motor Corp. and General Motors to become the world's biggest automaker by 2018.

In addition to developing more vehicles with the United States in mind, VW executives say they are committed to lowering the price of key volume models and improving quality and customer relations. Leading the charge is a team of executives who have mostly worked for the competition.

"The whole degree of integration and engagement with the market has been stepped up several levels," said Jonathan Browning, 52, a former GM and Ford executive who has headed Volkswagen Group of America and the VW brand in the United States since last October.

VW's new strategy includes:

-- Developing cars for U.S. customers and building them in North America. Examples so far are the new U.S.-built 2012 Passat sedan and two vehicles built in Mexico: the redesigned Jetta sedan that went on sale a year ago and the newly redesigned Beetle.

But more are on the way. Browning said future versions of the Golf and the Tiguan compact SUV and a new mid-sized SUV could be targeted directly at the United States. In short, that means they would get bigger, would have more cargo space and would be outfitted with more features desired by U.S. buyers, such as navigation systems and Bluetooth.

-- Dispelling two key reasons why VW internal research shows consumers reject the brand: a perception that its cars are priced higher than those of the competition and that repair costs are high. VW has lowered the sticker price on volume models and is offering 3-year/36,000-mile free scheduled maintenance on all vehicles.