No major European car company has suffered more over the past few years than the Volkswagen Group. The triple gut punch of Chinese competition eroding demand, tariffs eating into profits, and a failed electric transition has put the German conglomerate in a financial pickle that it doesn’t expect to recover from until next year. How does it plan to recover? Aside from slashing even more jobs than previously planned, the group also wants to build luxury cars in the United States and “reduce complexity” within its collection of brands (i.e., more platform-sharing).
Things are looking particularly bad at Porsche, where operating profit for 2025 fell by 98% due to issues that mostly mirror the larger VW Group’s problems (tariffs, Chinese competition, overspending on EVs). Things aren’t expected to get better in 2026 for Porsche, either, with more job cuts on the way.
What else is going on today? Slate, the Amazon-backed affordable electric truck startup, announced a new CEO today, just months before it’s expected to start building its long-awaited pickup. Staying in the realm of boardroom shakups, Nissan is another company that hasn’t had a great go at things lately. Its new CEO, Ivan Espinosa, is trying his damndest to turn the company around. While the company is still losing money, it’s losing less money than it expected to. A new chief financial officer should help stabilize things further.
Don’t Worry, The CEO Still Got His Multi-Million-Dollar Bonus
Last month, VW executives came up with a plan to reduce the company’s costs by 20% following a bunch of spending for electric vehicle development, which hasn’t really panned out. Competition in China from domestic brands has eroded demand in the country, with pressure mounting from those brands in VW’s home region. On a media call Tuesday, group CFO Arno Antlitz revealed plans to cut a further 50,000 jobs in Germany by 2030. This is on top of the 35,000 jobs already targeted for elimination within the conglomerate.
While Volkswagen closed a plant for the first time in its history back in December, Chinese brands are planting roots on the continent. It’s a whole new world, at least to CEO Oliver Blume. From Bloomberg:
“We are facing trade policy barriers, completely changed markets, different regulatory systems,” Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blume said on a media call. “The business model that has supported us for decades in the Volkswagen Group is not tenable anymore.”
VW is fighting back against fast-moving competition in China, still its most important market, and soft demand in Europe where the shift to EVs remains volatile. Chinese manufacturers are also preparing to enter Europe, with BYD Co., the world’s biggest EV maker, set to ramp up output in Hungary this year.
It’s not just job cuts where VW plans to save cash. It also wants to build Audis in the United States, where tariffs have kept the company’s market share at 4% (versus the company’s previous goal of 10% market share). And it could step on new subsidiary Scout Motors’ toes to do it.
To be “long term successful” Audi needs “some some localization there,” Antlitz said, pointing to VW’s existing factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, or a new factory that will make Scout Motors branded vehicles in South Carolina from next year as possible sites.
Antliz told Bloomberg that Volkswagen plans to lean even further into “reducing complexity in the group,” suggesting that platform-sharing might become even more common between the company’s brands, to drive down costs. VW is already the king of platform sharing; the Touareg above sits on the latest version of the MLB platform, which underpins five other SUVs in the group’s lineup. My hope is this means more VW-badged Porsches, rather than more Porsche-badged VWs. But if a report from back in September about the next Macan being basically a Q5 underneath is to be believed, I might not get my wish.
Nonetheless, CEO Oliver Blume isn’t going without a bonus despite VW’s performance in 2025. Because of net cash flows for the year, Blume is still receiving about $2.3 million on top of his normal compensation. If it makes you feel any better, that’s a lot less than last year, according to Manager Magazin:
Including pension contributions and variable compensation for several years, he received €7.4 million last year, according to the company’s annual report. The previous year, Blume had received around €3 million more from VW and Porsche combined.
One reason for the decline is the salary reduction implemented as part of the cost-cutting program. The Volkswagen board of directors is foregoing portions of its compensation totaling approximately 3.5 million euros in this context.
Once you get to a certain level, anything less than total company collapse means you usually get a bonus of some kind. Must be nice.
Once A Cash Cow, Now Barely Breaking Even
Much of the VW Group’s woes can be traced back to its luxury brands Audi and Porsche, which were previously two of the firm’s most profitable subsidiaries. Porsche, in particular, has had a rough time lately, with sales in China, formerly one of its largest markets, dropping by 26% last year. Things are so bad at the Stuttgart-based brand that its profit margin has essentially disappeared, falling well below analyst estimates. From Manager Magazin:
Porsche’s operating profit for 2025 amounted to €90 million, down from almost €5.3 billion the previous year – a decline of more than 98 percent. Including financial services, the sports car manufacturer achieved €413 million (2024: €5.6 billion). Analysts at Visible Alpha had expected an operating profit of almost half a billion euros, including financial services.
Back when Oliver Blume was in charge of Porsche, he planned to cut 4,000 jobs to save on costs. Then, in January, Michael Leiters, the former CEO of McLaren, was appointed to run the company. According to one report, he had to offer employees amnesty to find out just how bad things were. Manager Magazin expects even more cuts to emerge, which could happen as soon as tomorrow, when Leiters is expected to present financial results for 2025.
Just how many cuts are we talking? Manager Magazin published a feature on Porsche last month, where it pointed out that, in 2015, the company employed 25,000 people and built around 225,000 cars. Now, it employs 42,000 people, and the publication predicts it’ll produce the same number of cars in 2027 as it did in 2015. While I’m sure the cuts won’t be as drastic as the math suggests they might be, there are certainly ways to save money here that execs will take advantage of.
Slate Replaces Its Woman CEO On International Women’s Day
Despite a downturn in EV demand, Slate’s cheap pickup truck remains one of the most highly anticipated vehicle debuts of 2026. Christine Barman, the company’s CEO, was Slate’s first hire and has shepherded the project from small-time startup to full-on vehicle manufacturer over the past four years. Now, just months away from production, she’s being replaced by an Amazon exec. From TechCrunch:
Former Amazon Marketplace vice president Peter Faricy is the new person in charge of the company, and he started on Monday, Slate spokesperson Jeff Jablansky told TechCrunch. Most recently, Faricy had been an adviser at McKinsey and Bessemer Venture Partners. Faricy left the role at Bessemer to join Slate, according to Newsweek, which first reported the hire.
Considering Amazon has invested roughly $700 million into Slate, it’s not entirely surprising to see the company appoint one of its own to the role. But the timing is interesting. Barman has been the face of Slate since the firm revealed its truck back in April, so to remove her from the top spot now, at such a crucial time for the brand, is a bit odd.
Also, this is probably just a coincidence and bad timing, but Faricy starting on Monday means that Barman’s last day as CEO was on International Women’s Day, as the article’s author Sean O’Kane pointed out on BlueSky. Not a great look!
Barman isn’t leaving the company; she’ll stay on as the President of Vehicles to make sure deliveries commence, according to TechCrunch. Her move means there is now just one American car company led by a woman: Mary Barra at General Motors.
Nissan Gets A New Finance Guy To Curtail Losses
Nissan, like Volkswagen, hasn’t been doing great. At one point, one exec predicted the brand had “12 or 14 months to survive.” Since then, the Japanese brand nearly merged with Honda, then got a new CEO in Ivan Espinosa, who developed a multi-year cost-cutting campaign for the company that targets 20,000 job cuts and closing seven factories.
Nissan is still expected to post a loss for its fiscal calendar year ending in March, but since the cost-cutting efforts began, the company believes those losses won’t be as large. From Automotive News:
The forecasted operating loss, revised last month, is better than the ¥275 billion ($1.8 billion) in red ink it had forecast in November, but it reverses a ¥69.8 billion ($455.2 million) operating profit from the year before. Nissan is also forecasting a ¥650 billion ($4.2 billion) net loss.
That compares with a net loss of ¥670.9 billion ($4.4 billion) the year before.
Helping Espinosa with his quest was Jérémie Papin, who was appointed Nissan’s chief financial officer in January 2025. Just over a year later, Papin is stepping down for personal reasons and being replaced by Nissan finance veteran George Leondis. From Bloomberg:
Leondis joined Nissan in 2004 as head of finance for Australia. Since 2024 he’s been in Japan, where he’s led global product and industrial operations, as well as partnership financing and mergers and acquisitions.
He takes the role at a critical time for Nissan. While the carmaker’s brighter outlook has given Chief Executive Officer Ivan Espinosa a degree of breathing room, pressure is mounting on the company to refresh an aging lineup in order to reignite demand.
I like a lot of Nissan’s products right now, so I hope they can stick it out and turn things around.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
It’s really nice outside in New York right now, but I’m sad some of my favorite brands aren’t doing so great right now. So here’s “Summertime Sadness” from Lana Del Rey’s debut album, Born to Die.
The Big Question
Which platforms do you think Volkswagen will start sharing throughout its brands that it doesn’t already?
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
The ousting of Slate CEO Christine Barman really leaves a bad taste in my mouth regarding Slate. I’ve seen one in person, and they are really interesting little vehicles and while I don’t love EV’s, it’s one of the first I’ve seen that could actually see some interest and sales. Having said that, the Amazon connection and what just happened will make me never even consider one.
Instead of building cars like they do now, maybe Porsche could copy the likes of Ruf or Singer. Cut 90% of their workforce, and only build a few dozen cars a year they can sell for 7 figures.
Glass cliff, baby! #america
RIP my Slate delivery.
I’ve had my 2024 GLI MT for about a year now and it’s a great little runabout and commuter that can be fun when you push it. It was a CPO with under 6K kms on it and i paid like 30 grand Canadian for it. For the price what you get is pretty impressive and it has physical buttons and knobs for most things. The capacitive buttons on the steering wheel don’t bother me.
If i had to replace it with another MT car, I don’t know if there’s anything else that competes at the price point. I hope it keep it for years to come unless it pulls a VW on me.
VW’s problem is that what they did so well in the late 90’s into around 2018, offering an upscale level of build quality and refinement at entry-level prices, is no longer a novel concept, nor are they the best at executing on it. The Mk4-7 generations of the Golf were extremely compelling, driving a level or three above their similarly priced rivals. Now the Mk8 has a cheap feeling interior, the Jetta is a cost-cut afterthought, the Taos is the Taos, the Atlas is extremely dated and uncompetitive, and the ID products are horrifically uncompetitive.
On top of all of this you have the Koreans offering interesting style and incredible value for their feature set, Mazda offering a great value semi-luxury experience, and the Japanese offering far more reliable vehicles. There is nothing current VW products offer that puts them ahead of their competition, no manual transmissions, no high-quality interiors, no reliable powertrains, and no vehicles that stand out (save for the Buzz which is incredibly compromised and overpriced). VW lost it’s identity by trying to chase margins and trends, and there is hardly an easy recovery out of that.
The same goes for Audi and Porsche. Audi’s lineup went from one of the best in the post-recession era to one of the absolute worst in class. Porsche on the other hand has thrown money into two generations of Panamera since the Macan has debuted, and instead of revamping what makes money in the Macan and Boxster/Cayman ICE platforms, they redo the barely-selling Panamera and make an ICE Macan that was never going to have the sales potential of an ICE or Hybrid replacement.
While yes, the Dieselgate fallout and push towards some EVs was absolutely a hinderance on their bottom line, the high-level portfolio decisions made surrounding that have had an order of magnitude greater impact on the lack of success VAG has had over the last year. Piech was certainly not perfect in his strategies (Phaeton, etc) but he understood that in order to excel, you have to make excellent and distinct products. This is something VW leadership has completely abandoned in the past decade, and the sales reflect it.
That first paragraph is so effing accurate. We are on our 5 VW (2016 GTI Autobahn) and there is not a single current VW product that is remotely compelling to us. Wifey has stated that the keys to the GTI will be pried from our dead hands.
I bought a 2018 Golf Sportwagen S 4Motion 6-Speed new courtesy of a huge discount due to a dealer not being able to move it, and even if I had paid MSRP it would have been an incredible value for what it is. The interior was so solid, the build quality leaps and bounds ahead of it’s price range, the ergonomics incredible, just a fantstic vehicle.
That said, by the time it got close to 60k miles and problems were creeping in in 2022, I decided it was time to move on and there was zero chance I was even walking into a VW showroom. Ended up in a CX-30 turbo instead, trading the manual for more power and ground clearance for outdoorsy activities. If the Mk7.5 was still in production, I would likely have bought a GTI, but the Mk8 does nothing for me.
Nailed it
Spot on. I have owned and loved many VWs, but they are dead to me now for all of those reasons. I deeply regret falling for the Pandemic used car silliness and selling my ’17 GTI Sport. The MK8 is a joke.
I was set to replace my 2015 GTI DSG with a MK8 6MT when they first came out. Obscene dealer mark ups on them, unnoticeable driving dynamics improvements and a lackluster interior led me into a significantly cheaper but better to drive 2022 Civic Si.
If VW wants to make a change for the better, they should go back to what made them work for so long. They chased trends all through the 2000s and 2010s into every segment. They spent a ton of money to slowly morph into a company with 3 brands in the US only selling mid size SUVs for the most part. They decided that every car needs to be a fancy rav4 with just a little size or luxury difference. Now no one can tell if your Macan/Taos/Q5 is not the larger or smaller version of each, and it all just feels like a single, double, or triple fast food burger served in the same wrapper.
Make something cheap and fun and people will buy it. The Beetle and the GTI didn’t hit 60 is 3 seconds, but they were fun to drive and worked. I would love a decent priced 150hp sedan from VW, better yet a wagon. Throw a 1.4t or a NA 2.0 with a stick in a hatch back. Hell, bring back TDI.
The current Jetta is a decent-priced 150hp sedan. The Golf bowed out with a 1.4t and sold all of 20K units in the US. No one wants wagons even though they should. I want them to offer these types of cars (I factory-ordered a 2010 Jetta wagon with the stickshift) but these things are not going to save the company. They need cash cows.
“They chased trends all through the 2000s and 2010s into every segment”
Those are the cash cows they need to do in order to remain solvent. But they need to do it better. They waited way too long to offer something decent in the crossover segments, after taking forever offering something price-competitive in the compact and midsize sedan classes. They need a reputation for dependability and retail value that doesn’t immediately crater. Hybrids and PHEVs are big here now and VW is nowhere to be found. They’re always late to the mainstream party.
I think the way out to to lead away from the cash cows that are industry standard right now. Go in on small cars, offer a hybrid manual, make a modern VW caddy, or even bring the small van to the US. Keep selling the midsize SUV, but convince people that there is better. Offer the same utility with more value in a wagon. Offer more utility for less money with the van. Offer more fun with better price in the hatchback. I just hate to see the idea that all the cars will one day just be the same platform with different names.
Maaaybbee…I don’t know.
I’m no market insider. I’m sure there’s some value in “hitting them where they ain’t”, but I don’t know if doubling down on failed market segments would be successful. Small cars are a shrinking segment, even the excellent Civic is losing a lot of ground there. The last Golf wagon was great one, but a slow seller. I want the cars you reference, but I think they need to be offered alongside a more mainstream portfolio of big sellers to keep the company alive.
It’s bizarre to me to watch such massive companies fall in real time. Just a few years ago, VW produced the most vehicles in the world, and now they’re on death watch. Frankly, I don’t think anything can be done to save them without serious losses. They do not have a reputation of reliability, longevity, or quality to trade on. And building such a reputation takes significant time. What was their last successful product genre? Diesels were a lie. Their EVs are uncompetitive. They don’t offer any hybrids. And their gas ICE vehicles are unreliable. VW doesn’t have enough time or money to right the ship and start offering a full hybrid line-up like Toyota.
The worst part of all of this is that companies are scrambling to deal with “losses” from EV cars, but in the end, that’s more than likely where we are going. It makes too much sense not to for most people in most places. But companies are so set to make sure every quarter they have to hit X numbers to make investors happy they lurch back and forth and chase trends rather than set a path and stay within limits that allow for real stability.
The ID Buzz is a perfect example. It was too expensive, and too over styled. In person in a solid color, it not bad. If they could produce it for less and make it basic transportation, it would be great. If they just called it the Transport or The VW bus or something not sloganizes and build for SEO, it could have just been a god car. Instead they tried to push all the buttons at once to try and make it everything and made it nothing instead.
Yea the whole thing is a tragedy. As soon as VW spins up some hybrid products, the market will be back to EVs. And they have clearly demonstrated they are incapable of producing good EVs.
Also, that bit about hitting X numbers to make investors happy is too real. I was recently in the midwest visiting family and we made a stop at Menards. Menards is a private company. Unlike Walmart, for example, Menards doesn’t need to focus on making sure that the line always goes up and to the right every 3 months. Shopping at Menards just has a different feel than a publicly traded entity. The whole focus on quarterly reports has destroyed the corporate world’s ability to strategize beyond the near term, and we are now seeing the damage it causes. We saw it happen a couple of years ago with the railroads. And the same thing plagues our politics (except instead of every three months, it’s every 2–4 years).
I love Menards. I was at one 3 times this past weekend. Their buyers do not say “No” to selling anything. The joke is that they exists to support the owners racing habit.
I also prefer Menard’s for much the same reasons. I work at a place that buys a lot of construction materials but in a huge odd variety. They are always my go to because they help and care if we come back. I do wish they would email receipts thought.
Before Menards we had a company called Southerland’s around here that I think is still a thing in smaller markets that was just as good.
I am also a Midwesterner that prefers going to Menards over Home Depot or Lowes I hate going to Florida and not having a Mendards around hah. Also their 11% rebate is nice (but is it really saving money or just getting me back to the store? Haha)
The giant summer sausages just in a box next to whatever bathroom fixture aisle they happened to be placed by always made me laugh.
Also, someone high up in corporate must have a train soft spot, because there’s no way dedicating an entire aisle to model trains is a good use of revenue per shelf-foot (or whatever the metric is big retailers use).
Or the frozen pizza next to the overstuffed loveseats, next to the gym shorts?
SAVE BIG MONEY AT MENARD’S
Sorry, as soon as I see the name the jingle immediately is inserted in my head. Kind of like Hy-Vee’s “There’s a helpful smile in every aisle.”
VW has definitely lost their way, but line must go up.
Don’t they offer hybrids in Europe? It seems crazy not to bring those models over here
Do you know what kind of hybrids they are? Is it like a Hyundai/Kia with an electric motor attached to a 6-speed auto? Or is it like a Honda/Toyota with an eCVT? That seems to be a pretty good litmus test for how committed a company is to hybrids.
Not sure about transmission but I know that they have almost all of the models they sell here in the US as Plug-in Hybrids in Europe.
Weird, I bet they would do pretty well over here. Toyota can’t make plug-in hybrids fast enough.
That’s my thinking as well.
Even if they want to save cost and reduce battery capacity to just a hybrid offering, being the “hybrid only” brand couldn’t hurt their sales numbers
VW absolutely has a reputation for quality and longevity in the rest of the world (or at least had one, no clue if the current offerings still do). How they managed to stuff that up in the US for so long is baffling to me.
I’ve thought about that often. VW in Europe appears to be the default vehicle. While, at least during my lifetime, VW has never been anything more than a niche alternative to the Japanese and domestic automakers in the US. Do Europeans put up with less reliable vehicles? Are EDM VWs more reliable? Does the differing use cases of the Euro market make enough difference?
Dunno. I am from Northern New England where VWs were mostly seen the same way they are in Europe. I’ve owned seven, no complaints about any of them, damned good cars that lasted a long time (the ones I bought used, the two I bought new I didn’t own long enough for unfortunate reasons, job loss and my own stupidity, respectively).
Conversely, much like in Europe, until very recently Japanese cars did NOT have the reputation they have in milder climates where I am from either. You don’t get a reputation for mechanical reliability when you reliably dissolve into piles of rust in 3-5 years.
I disagree, Japanese cars had a long reputation to run (and run well) past their bodies dissolved into reddish-brown puddles.
Germans have long supported the home teams, as did the French and Italians. So it was a cultural shift for them to consider Toyota. But the shift I’ve seen in the years have seen massive proliferation of long-roof Toyota Corollas and small Hyundai hatchbacks throughout continental Europe has accelerated – and now with all the really good Chinese EV options, I can easily see how other established brands are taking a serious beating.
Running well doesn’t matter when your car fails state inspection for rust at age three as my folks first Subaru did, and was junked at age six. They bought one more, that one rusted badly despite “Rusty Jones” rust proofing, and they never even considered another one. It took a LONG time to get past that reputation, and even now people in New England tend to think of European cars as long-lasting, even if they aren’t as “reliable”. Reliable doesn’t matter when your car has no floors and the state won’t let you drive it anymore.
Europeans still car far more how cars drive, along with wanting to stick to the home teams. So Toyota/Hyundai et all are certainly doing far better than in the past, but they aren’t dominating the market there like they did in the US. Nor will the Chinese.
RIP Slate, we hardly knew ye.
The appointment just makes me go “wut”. I know everyone wants to be Tesla, which was started by SV types instead of traditional automotive folks, but this new guy’s CV isn’t a wellspring of hope. VP of Marketplace and the freakin’ McKinsey and Bessemer doesn’t inspire confidence.
Note the Barman is still responsible for ‘make sure deliveries commence’, so if that hits a snag, she’ll be the first one they throw under the bus. If all does go good, the new CEO will get the credit, not Barman.
But but…. He will make sure the stock holders will get their returns first and fast… you know make sure the value of the company is there when it’s fully taken over my amazon to make full size self driving delivery drones to chuck boxes at your house from the curb… that’s were this is going right?
I suddenly had visions of the Paperboy 2000 from 90’s TV show “Get a Life”.
That’s a Deep cut from childhood.
The company I worked for for over a decade brought in McKinsey a few years ago to “make us more profitable”. Three years later, a company with over 50 years of experience completely folded and got sold off for next to nothing. I’m sure not every consultant at McKinsey is as bad as the drug-addicted morons they sent us but this doesn’t look good for Slate.
Did they by any chance bring in a private equity investor connected to McKinsey that bought the company using loans, then saddled those loan payments on the (previously profitable) company along with exorbitant consulting fees?
That was basically the playbook of Mitt Romney at Bain Capital:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-183291/
Sure, the employees might have gotten fired and lost any hope of drawing their pensions, but think how much money the McKinsey partners made!
Worse, the lead consultant that McKinsey sent over somehow convinced our board to replace our CEO with himself. He spent the next 2 years running the company into the side of the iceberg, backing it up, and ramming it again and again until the board finally fired him and brought back the old CEO. Why it took them 2 yrs to realize he was a drug addict with no idea how to run our company is beyond me. But wait, it gets better! McKinsey was upset about us poaching their “expert” so not only did we have to pay them for the excellent advice the board also had to pay extra as a settlement for poaching their guy.
Anyways, old CEO came back but dummkopf had done so much damage and pissed away so much money that a year later the board sold us off piece by piece at a loss.
I don’t even think I can armchair-executive VW right now. I got nothing for their current and continuing woes. Good luck I guess, but it’s not a brand I have any affinity for.
Well said. I owned and loved my 78 Rabbit and my 82 Scirocco and have no desire to shop VW now.
Everything VW makes, another automaker makes something better. There is no compelling reason to even shop them. My son just had his Mini totaled and going around we ignored the VW lot.
Exactly, I did see a new green vw corssover on a lot last week and went “cool green” but then I thought not a boring vw crossover.
A manual GLI is a fairly unique proposition now, and even the DSG-only GTI and Golf R have real appeal to me. But you can’t float an automotive conglomerate on 2-3 niche products. In every high volume segment there are numerous better options.
Incredibly true for VW, every single product they have has at least one Achilles heel over the competitors. This also rings true for most other VW group brands. Audi’s lineup offers little to the segment, the ICE Macan is incredibly outdated while the new EV Macan isn’t a good replacement for many, and the higher end stuff like fancy 911’s and Lamborghini sales can’t possibly counter all the bloat.
Same here. No idea how they can get themselves out of this, and I don’t really care. I love my VW dearly, but it’s ancient, and they haven’t made anything compelling to me since they killed off the last of their manual wagons here in the states. Nice knowin’ ya, VW.
I feel for VW. Maybe I shouldn’t. But those job losses are real. And they had some genuinely good products and a bunch more that would have been great if they had managed to achieve average reliability.
I’m not sure what the problem has been in Europe, but they’ve flailed around badly in the North American market for the 20 years I’ve been looking, refusing to conform in ways that would be useful (reliability, offering products in large volume segments) and then giving up on the nonconformist things that were endearing (nice interiors, wagons, stick shifts, the Golf) so in the end they’ve alienated both mainstream and enthusiast arenas.
I don’t care about Porsche. Sorry. With the Boxster gone it’s just crossovers and unobtainables.
I feel for VW, by which I mean “I feel for the workers whose leadership have gotten rich(er) while failing them.”
Yep.
Always this. The CEO’s land on their feet with a golden parachute and opportunity to crash another company, but the people on the assembly lines are always the one that suffer and struggle. At least the European employees won’t lose healthcare along with their jobs like US workers do.
VW was a Toyota for people who likes a little more style when I was young. Audi was for weirdos who wanted fast Volvos or cheaper BWMs, and Porsche was for the person who had made enough money to have a second car or a first car and no kids.
None of those things are true now. VW is for people who want a rav4ish SUV, Audi is for people who want a Mercedes SUV but cheaper, and Porsche is for people who want to invest in a car they don’t really drive.
I have an Audi, I loved VW’s as a kid, and I have had a ton of fun in my old 944 and a friends 912 over the years. Nothing any of the VW group sells in the US makes me feel like I should have one.
“VW was a Toyota for people who likes a little more style when I was young”
“VW is for people who want a rav4ish SUV”
I see those two statements as the same thing, just valid in different eras. Back then, toyota was primarily sedans and wagons. Now it, and the rest of the market, is RAV4ish. VW could make a set of RAV4ish SUVs that followed the 90s/early aughts formula of more style, more refinement, a bit more performance. Toyota and Honda leave enough interior quality, noise control, and driving engagement on the table that VW could step in, apply the MkV Jetta treatment to the Taos and Tiguan and get my attention again.
That’s a fair judgement. I just think some days I miss the options that were available when I was younger and now that I can afford a new car, I find I don’t want any of them. I will admit, I’m an outlier and would rather take a demonstrably bad car with something interesting over a good car that’s boring. I worry the sameness gets worse before it gets better though and we see more car makers go and more consolidation that closes off chances for innovation and fun.
I hope I’m wrong and VW pulls it off.
Yeah, I’m there with you. I loved my VW wagon with the warbly 5-cylinder and Audi-like interior and I have the ability to buy 3-Series BMW, but the VW doesn’t exist anymore and the BMW is homogenized automatic-only gritty turbo-four, and if you spend up for the inline six it’s still sedan or crossover only.
I’d be just fine with an efficient hybrid box crossover for routine family duties, but I’d like the other side of the driveway to be something else and there aren’t many choices anymore.
I remember back in the late 90s, early 2000s, coming from a Honda/Nissan or anything US made and then getting into a VW, just by closing the door you knew the car was different, the materials/assembly were solid, even my 73 Beetle feels solid.
They went cheap and overcomplicated things, now they are as generic as any other brand but with no reliability and very difficult to work with them. Everyone else, even Chevy, improved their assembly and quality.
Hybrids? Non existent.
Electric vehicles? Meh, GM has better ones.
Diesel? Cheated.
VW as a brand went too far and offers the same as Skoda, but those vehicles are cheaper and better looking.
VW lost their defining feature when they dropped the TDI models.
Imagine if VW figures out how to lay a 4cly on its side again for Scout and then slaps that under the back of an IDBuzz and drops the price to reasonable. (just wishful thinking.)
Heck, they have a tooling for the flat 4 from the Boxster.
I read something about Scout trying to tilt over a 1.5 L strait 4, and I was thinking that of any manufacture they and subaru know how to do a flat motor.
One one hand VW can rightly lay a lot of blame for massive trade turbulence caused by illegal tariffs (not to mention all the additional political threats)
And on the other hand, everyone could see VW struggling coming into this.
Is VW building another factory or new assembly lines, for Audi and/or Scout, the best solution?
I’ll go on a limb here: long term, it’s probably the wrong answer for them. VW still needs to cut capacity worldwide to stabilize their business.
How about you reduce the complexity on a goddamn per-car basis? No more stupid e-torx, no more motors in needless places, no more allen-key-obfuscation of simple fasteners. I hated working on VAG cars. They were always so goddamn extra in every little thing.
Sorry, that bolt you can’t clearly see the top of and can’t easily access, is actually a triple square. And it’s needed to be removed for basic maintenance, tightened by the factory gorilla, and there’s no way you’re getting a breaker bar in there.
Lolol I actually started typing out more about triple squares but cut myself off to get on a meeting. 100% right though. I bought a hideously expensive 18″, 1/4″ drive flex head ratchet for exactly that kind of bullshit. Ugh.
Hey, that factory gorilla is my cousin! He’s actually got very delicate hands!
And for god’s sake simplify the infotainment system
I’m about to take the headliner, pillars and sunroof cover out of my 2005 Phaeton to reupholster them. I’ll be cursing about three minutes in. I already had to do some disassembly in those areas to run a backup camera mirror to the trunk, so I know how bad it is.
This is so true. Unlike reasonable (profitable) companies like Toyota where half the car can be rebuilt with a 10mm socket, changing the oil on my Allroad takes a combination of 2 different torx, a 13mm wrench, and a special tool to remove the plastic oil drain plug, and a 32mm for the filter.
On the other hand, it makes things easier for me because it also has motors to softly and fully close the door for me if I am too weak to slam it and multiple actuators required to release the liftgate, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
VW needs something entry-level and affordable. The original Type 1 Beetle and its platform friends the Type 2 Bus and the Type 3 coupe/sedan/wagon were the original shared platform. VWs today are extra complicated and haven’t been the cheapest vehicles on the market for decades.
A return to the *Volks* part of the name with a simpler entry-level platform would really help.
Boom, exactly. They need to lean into simple, reliable, efficient vehicles. Make commercials that make fun of everything lifted, blacked out or excessive in the automotive industry.
Very much agree. VW can even make use of existing platforms (Skoda) to do this. Looking at the VWs from the 90s, they were able to make some fun, affordable cars in addition to establishing a unique identity. The advertising was top-notch (Un-pimp the Auto and the Pink Moon ad). My wife and I looked at a Jetta in the early 2000s and the sales person told us that VW was looking to become more of a “premium” auto in the US. I think that was the beginning of the slide. That’s when the cars started becoming more complex and expensive. A back to basics approach may help VW in the US.
That would be the Jetta – which has a starting MSRP of $24,000. That makes it the 6th cheapest new vehicle for sale in the USA.
VW needs to figure out how to stand out in its markets and create a niche for itself. They need to focus on reliability and counter culture. Show people buying boring sedans and crossovers and then cut to cool people having fun in their Golf GTIs, Jetta GLIs and Tiguan Turbos (which should be branded like a GTI or GLI, GLX?).
The cars aren’t bad they just have no identity.
Countercultural vibes in VW’s marketing would be dope. Lean into the hippie-bus image of the old Type 2 and other classic models.
Everyone I know who claims to be a hippie (or hippie-adjacent) with a new-ish car drives Subarus & Toyotas. VW hasn’t made anything that appeals since the 3rd-gen Beetle and the Golf Alltrack.
Exactly my thinking. VW is a different image in Europe but in the US, it’s the alt. VW needs to lean into the old Apple motto “Think Different” and make basic, unique transportation.
The US has almost no hatchbacks or wagons for sale, bring back the Alltrack and a standard wheelbase Golf version and make them mild and full hybrids. Market them as the trendy, thinking persons car and get that marketshare!
Unfortunately, VW’s idea of leaning into the hippie-bus image is a $60+k electric vehicle that they take a decade to release.
I just can’t see Slate succeeding, for 27,500 you get a very basic vehicle, talking 150 miles of range, no power windows, even no radio. The truck is rwd, and has a tow rating of only 1000lbs. A quick search shows Ford Mavericks which come standard with more features and capability as being available below the proposed starting price of the slate. Even moving up to a Silverado or F150, the most basic work trucks can be had for low 30s and still have more features than the Slate. Maybe I’m wrong and all the extras and add ones will end up being super cheap and it will all make sense, but as it sits I just don’t know who the Slate EV is for.
I don’t necessarily understand this comparison. A Slate and anything else on your list is fundamentally different.
An EV is very big departure from an ICE vehicle. I would say a Slate is closer to a Leaf than it is a Maverick. Comparing Slates and Mavericks is like comparing apples and meatballs. They’re both round, both food, but if the store is out of apples, you don’t buy meatballs, and visa versa.
However, I would say that this move at the top is not going to help Slate’s chances. Their business case is an uphill battle, and strengthening that association with Amazon and other venture capital is going to disintegrate more than a few reserves.
I don’t really think that comparing a basic truck to a basic truck is some way out there comparison, but even if I take your premise. Why would anyone get this over a Leaf or a Bolt which both have way more standard features and range. It’s not like the Slate offers a lot more payload or towing than those 2 vehicles, it doesn’t give you the benefit of awd, the only think it offers is an admittedly nice looking truck body. The issue remains that this would only qualify as a good option for a vanishingly small number of people.
I think the Leaf and Bolt comparison is a good one for the Slate. Someone might choose it because they want a little truck instead of a little car, and the modular customization stuff is appealing in a market that totally lacks that anymore. That new CEO announcement makes me super nervous for them, I think the result will be the company compromising themselves out of existence.
Yes, I think the Leaf/Bolt/Slate comparison is more likely for a prospective buyer.
There, the Slate only works for someone who wants that small bed, or the Slate ‘cache’ of being something different. That, and the real nickel and diming, who can get out the door the cheapest.
Don’t forget that the Slate also offers crank windows and no radio. Those will be huge selling features.
Although the federal EV subsidy is dead and probably won’t return to the same degree when the government changes again, Slate still benefits from state EV subsidies for which the Maverick is ineligible.
I think your comparison is apt. When I look for a vehicle, I don’t shop pick-ups against cars. I decide what I want and look for vehicles in that form. I don’t decide on the engine type (EV, ICE, steam, etc.) and limit myself to those.
Amazon doing something with optics that are obviously bad to virtually anyone with functional brain… Must be a Tuesday. This is just depressingly par for the course for them.
Yeah. They don’t care.
It gives me concerns that they’ll take Slate from being an innovative startup to “Amazon Basics Car” by the time it’s in production.
Your concern is valid.
Since the “documentary” came out I hadn’t ordered a thing from Amazon.
Which, by my standards, it’s like 10 eternities.
Want me to help you hate them more? Most amazon trailers are barely loaded, if not moving with a couple boxes. Also, their freight rates are so poor, the poor fools pulling them have to do 90 mph to make enough miles to make money. But it burns so much diesel they dont break even, and the truck is repoed. So Amazon is contributing more than its fair share on the trucking side to climate change and financial crisis.
Nissan. So, they are at the point where refinancing with special rates is the solution to their problems?
Sounds like they are learning from their customers.
What VW needs to do is hook up an ID.4 to the corpse of Ferdinand Piech and try to jumpstart him back to life
All I can think of is Piech looking like the head vampire from the first Underworld movie being reawakened
That is pretty much what he looked like when he was alive.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Ferdinand_Piech_by_Stuart_Mentiply.jpg
sounds about as logical as anything else they’ve tried so far
Can VW actually learn how to make cars? They’re known for making crap LOL
I don’t know, I had a Super Beetle once that was pretty damn reliable. Basic, but I wouldn’t say crap at all
What kind of volkswagen would you drive if you had just under ten million euros of your bonusses to spend?
Me? I would probably get one of those W12 pheatons for 20 grand and spent the rest on maintenance and upkeep.
Yikes, you don’t want to keep it more than a couple of years?
The last time Porsche was in trouble, they saved the company by making SUVs. Maybe this time we’ll get a pickup truck.
Full size, BOF.
Honestly,
If I would have gotten a bonus of €7.4M last year and only got €2.3M this year.
I don’t know how that would make me feel.
I’d feel indignant, but also rich, so the other feeling wouldn’t last long.
I’d be looking across the pond at what US CEOs make and feel pretty poor either way.
Has VW tried to sell it cars cheaper? Do they have anything other than forgettable crossovers that people forget exist and then go buy a Toyota, Honda or Hyundai? Do they have anything unique, low price, and fun like they did when they grew to be a giant auto company? They can try to down to 1-2 platforms but that may not help.
Do you not remember when VW moved towards cheaper (and more boring) models in North America in the late aughts and early teens?
The B6 Passat to the NMS Passat is the classic example of it.
Isn’t the VW Jetta just the made-for-America cheap MQB?
The current A7 gen is, yes. I look at VW in America as 3 eras. In terms of Jettas, the A1 to A3 established the reputation as solid, simple cars with a cool, counter-culture appeal. The A4 and A5 gens “premiumized” those cars with higher price points and more features but maintained the appeal. The A6 and A7 are the cost cutting, appeal to everyone and therefore nobody versions.
They appeal to rental fleets!
This is exactly when VW started losing me. Compare a 2010 Jetta with the cheapo 2011 redesign. They were the same price but the 2011 was so thoroughly decontented that it felt as if the $5000 VW pulled out of it was spent directly on a kick to the groin of their prior customers.
Yes, and it’s what has ruined US market VWs. Toureg to Atlas, MKV Jetta to NCS MKVI Jetta, B6 Passat to NMS Passat. When VW tries to go cheaper, it loses anything that really makes them special or unique (in the North American market). Their cheaper models just end up being forgettable, bland, economy cars that require more regular and expensive maintenance than something like a Toyota or Honda.
I’d argue that the issue with the strategy was that VW made those cars big, complex and cheap rather than small, simple, dependable and therefore desirable.
VW needs to build cars which are small, simple, dependable and desirable again.
^This. They need to lean into simple “German Engineering” and also their counter-culture appeal in the US
Simple german engineering isn’t a phrase I’ve encountered before, seems like a great idea though!
Their designs already lean towards constrained and minimalist. Clean designs, practical interiors and easily functional features would go a long way to increase appeal among buyers. That takes design and engineering money though even if it would reduce materials and production costs
Ah yeah their design is pleasantly minimal though possibly leaning too much towards cheap these days. I was originally joking that the germans and certainly VW/Audi aren’t really known for simple engineering when it comes to the mechanical beneath the skin stuff. This is a company that notoriously puts a failure prone plastic water pump underneath the intake manifold of relatively pedestrian vehicles.
Yeah, they don’t realize that just a few part changes could make their cars really reliable. Leave the weird engineering choices to Audi and let VW be the “we’ve ironed out the kinks” brand
Put the “volks” back in Volkswagen
All of his example vehicles were arguably less complex than the vehicles they replaced.
VW hasn’t ever been well known for dependable. There’s no “again”.
Type 1/Beetle?
Type 2/Bus?
Type 3/Squareback?
Type 14/KarmannGhia?
Golf/Scirocco/Jetta 1?
Easy to work on, yes.
Reliable? I wouldn’t put it that far.
As much as we complain of modern cars, they are generally more robust than the ‘old days’.
The is a VERY North American perspective on VW.
1. Forgive me for not buying into VW’s tiered hierarchy of Skoda/SEAT/VW/Audi/Porsche/Lambo/Bentley world and ranking a VW Golf far higher in all aspects than a mere Skoda Octavia.
2. No, I’m also not buying into VW’s hyper-nationalism of German (engineering) superiority.
3. VW of America made things worse, but I wouldn’t necessarily say from a reliability perspective, but from a product perspective. Simpler product should be easier to make reliable:
The Taos as a rebranded budget Chinese-market SUV, the de-contented VW Jetta (which isn’t really a Euro car anyway), the dissolution of the world-car VW Golf from the US market, the Atlas because they believe (likely rightly) America pays more for big, not better, I could go on with older examples of a the Passat on the old-platform, a rebranded Chrysler minivan but those would only support a theory that VW of America was releasing unreliable vehicles decades ago…
and 4. Put down the rose coloured glasses.
VWoA hasn’t had a clue since about 1975, and has actively shot themselves and the Mothership in the foot time after time. But that doesn’t change the fact that VW in NA and VW in Europe/RoW are seen very, very differently by the residents of those places. NA is ultimately a very individual market, and “world” cars rarely sell well here, and the things that sell well here rarely sell well anywhere else. And that includes the Japanese makes – most of what they REALLY sell in NA for decades are basically NA-specific cars, and barely sell in the rest of the world. The Camry is considered a joke on the other side of the pond.
Personally, I think VW should have just sold rebadged Skodas here for the past 20 or so years, plus the Golf/GTI. They have not had much clue about what Americans want in a car. Which is also a problem for those of us who actually WANT what they sell RoW. Sold anyway – they seem to be losing the plot everywhere.
Small does not sell in the USA. Company after company has learned that and makes larger versions of their cars for the US market. VW was late the the party of supersizing.
See also Accord (1993) and Camry (1991)
I included “unique and fun” for a reason.
How can they sell cars cheaper when they are already losing money by the boatload?
People don’t seem to get just how fucking expensive cars are to develop, produce, and sell today.
Which is why VW sells the same car with 6 different badges claiming they’re different vehicles for different markets.
They already have the Cadillac Cimmaron
The difference is that their cars are actually pretty good historically, electric nonsense excepted evidently. You can base a more premium car on a car that is premium already, aka you can make a Golf into an Audi. But putting lipstick on a pig ala the Cimmaron fools nobody. Plus there is a HUGE difference between using the same platform toolset to make many different cars instead of literally changing the badges and putting some cheap leather in and doubling the price.