Post by Kasey Kagawa

You have to hand it to the Germans. When they want to do something, they don’t do it by half-measures. VW is leading the charge towards an automotive Fourth Reich with their new plans to overtake Toyota as the world’s largest manufacturer. Their plans include expansions of their business in the US, India and China and the debut of twelve new models in the next three years. Of course, their current position is, well, decidedly not near the front of the pack, with approximately 6 million cars sold annually to Toyota’s 9 million. They need to not only overcome this massive sales difference, but they also need to nail their big debuts in China and India, revive the practically comatose US sales market, come out with probably two or three huge sales hits, reverse thinking about German reliability, all while keeping the same level of build and materials quality that got them where they are today. Now, that’s not to say that it’s impossible. If anyone can turn around an impossible economic situation, it’s the Germans. I don’t think it’ll be as easy as when Toyota did it, though.

When Toyota decided to knock GM off the top perch, they had a lot of things going for them. They already had a reputation for being totally bombproof when it comes to reliability and the people who bought their cars weren’t looking for a well-apportioned interior, just a big metal box that you sit in and moves you around, probably on four wheels, and that doesn’t break down. VW, on the other hand, makes its current sales based on the idea that their cars are a little bit more expensive than the competition, but if you’re willing to pay the slightly greater costs, it’s better than its competitors and worth the extra money. It’s a great niche to work if you’re comfortable being fourth or so, but if you ever try to step it up to second or first, you’d better be able to do it without sacrificing your core business or you’ll piss off all your old supporters and stand a high chance of not being able to attract enough business to replace them, and if Toyota is any indication, that might not be possible. Toyota’s customer satisfaction and reliability has suffered recently, largely due to their shift in priorities caused by their bid for number one, and I don’t know if it’s possible to be a serious challenger for the top spot without cutting into build quality and reliability. If this really is the case, I recommend VW take a cue from Honda and instead of focusing on being the top seller, focus on making their cars as good as they can make them and take satisfaction from being the best instead of being the biggest.

Volkswagen plans to overtake Toyota as world’s largest by 2015 [Autoblog]