Volkswagen AG is one of the most audacious goals of the automotive industry: dethrone Toyota Motor Corp. as the largest automaker in the world. However, there is a problem in the crucial U.S. market; the German company has only 2.2% even after South Korea’s Kea.
Now, VW struggle to regain lost ground in U.S. with a strategy that stood for decades: to adapt their cars to the tastes prevalent in the country. “A lot of people are concerned that VW start making cars for the masses,” said Mark Barnes, COO of the company’s U.S. “I prefer to say that we will bring the masses to VW.”
The next year, is scheduled to a new family-size sedan leaving the assembly line recently built a new plant in the state of Tennessee.
Is the first car manufactured in the U.S. VW from the 1980’s? Since then, the Mexican subsidiary of the German carmaker, Volkswagen of Mexico, became more important, becoming the second most important plant outside Germany and manufacturing models, including the New Beetle, which were exported to U.S. “I am well aware that Volkswagen was too cautious for too long in North America,” said the chief executive of Volkswagen, Martin Winterport, during an event to test drive the new Jetty in San Francisco, a few months ago.
His comment referred to the tendency of the car to send across the Atlantic cars designed for European tastes. That left U.S. operation models too small and expensive to compete with U.S. and Asian rivals. Now, he promised: “We changed it from head to toe.”