| Thursday, March 1, 2007 |
10:40 - Far from nügen
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=3164
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I should have linked this when it was new a week ago. As someone who only a few months ago turned in the keys to his much-beloved, stalwart Jetta VR6, it pains me to see Volkswagen laid so low:
The Phaeton landed in America (with an almighty thud) in 2002. By then, the company's wandering eye had placed its U.S. operations in harm's way. The core of their product portfolio– which is to say every car other than the Phaeton– was decidedly stale. From 2001 to 2005, VWoA sales fell down some 37%, to 224,195. Even worse, the Germans didn't seem to care.
The Jetta and Golf ranges exemplify the product neglect. While the rest of the world savored the Golf MK V in 2003, the older MK IV models hung around in the U.S. until 2005. The competition grew larger, more powerful and less expensive; the centerpiece of VWoA's U.S. lineup stood still. Volksie's rep for clever and compelling advertising nosedived as well; the brand lost both its populist edge and its competitive advantage.
When the new Jetta and Golf Rabbit finally arrived (last year), the real trouble began. Whereas the previous Jetta was a tidy, micro-luxury car that epitomized the VW-Audi design language of the day, the new Jetta looks like a badly photochopped Toyota Corolla. Bizarrely, VW nailed the Jetta's design in Europe; subsidiary Skoda’s Octavia is a far more coherent proposition.
I'm particularly gratified that someone else noticed this:
Corolla...
...And Jetta.
Volkswagen, what did I say that sounded like "The Jetta's as reliable as it needs to be; I just wish it looked more generic!"?
The Phaeton never seemed to make sense to me; I hoped it would succeed, but I never could convince myself that it would, and in the first SJ Auto Show where it was displayed, I cornered a fixed-grin-wearing presenter and tried to get her to tell me how it was selling, and I mean really selling, like for reals and all. Her airy "Oh, it's doing fine," was just hesitant enough to tell me all I needed to know.
Badge-engineering—poorly and politically executed—may be at the heart of all this. I've heard the theory that Audi was jealous of the previous-generation Passat's elegant solution to the mid-size, sporty sedan problem, and its attendant ubiquity—and that they pressured VW to move in a different direction so as to stop threatening A4 and A6 sales. But VW's move was upmarket, not down—aggressively upmarket, in a way that nobody else has ever done so quickly, probably because everybody else who analyzed the option thought it was stupid. And to nobody's surprise, it didn't work: the world may never be ready for an $80,000 Volkswagen, and certainly wasn't in 2002.
And now we see the result: emergency sandbagging and cost-cutting means we now have maintenance-pig fives instead of the buttery and elegant (but expensive) VR6, leatherette (you mean vinyl?) instead of leather, lackluster and derivative styling instead of the sharp and dapper lines I fell in love with in 1999, and the same initial-quality problems that they've suffered from for the past ten years—only now nobody's going to want to cut them a break for it.
If they'd spent their capital on improving quality and making their cars rock-solid (like the Japanese), then they would be in good enough shape today that they wouldn't have to be making their cars look yawningly nondescript (like the Japanese). But reputations for reliability take a while to cultivate, just as they take a while to wear down once they're established. It was apparently seen as an easier path to stardom to build high-end luxury vehicles, like the Touareg and Phaeton, which they could then proudly proffer as the base for things like the Cayenne and the Q7 and the A8. Which may have been somewhat successful, I don't know. I hardly think it was worth sacrificing the Jetta and Passat, though.
I've jumped ship to Audi. At least they seem to have it going on (even if they can't design armrests to save their life).
UPDATE: By the way, the Skoda Octavia does indeed look frickin' sweet. That is what an updated version of my Jetta should have looked like.
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Brian Tiemann
