Volkswagen Steers to U.S. Style to Boost Brand Sales

The Volkswagen brand switches into another gear in order to boost its sales in the US. In order to do that the manufacturer aims at 800,000 annual US unit sales by 2018. Also, it plans to offer more vehicles and features targeted specially at American buyers. A big issue for the manufacturer was that the brand constantly sent cars designed for Europe to the United States.

The manufacturer realized that they were not competitive with their models on the US market, which scored poorly on quality and dependability surveys. Moreover, the manufacturer hasn’t sold more than 300,000 vehicles in the US since 2003. Last year, VW sold 256,000 vehicles in the United States. Nowadays the VW group has assigned new importance to the US, hoping to pass Toyota Motor Corp.and General Motors in order to become the biggest car maker by 2018.

Aside the developing of more vehicles with the United States, VW is committed to lowering lowering the price of key volume models and improve quality and customer relations. The VW change is expected to be lead by 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. We will do that with other entries as well. You will begin to see a core of products that will permeate their segments deeper and deeper. You need the core products that drive volume and throughput in the system," Jonathan Browning, former GM and Ford executive who has headed Volkswagen Group of America and the VW brand in the United States since last October was quoted as saying by Automotive News.