Volkswagen chasing Toyota
November 27, 2007 by Alborz Fallah
The Volkswagen group has made public plans to catch Toyota, the world largest manufacturer. The German company which encompasses Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Seat, Skoda and even Lamborghini, plans for a major change in the way it will engineer cars in the future.
The plan comes amid orders by high-level management to go after Toyota by cutting development costs and doubling global sales.
To help dreams turn into reality, the VW group is developing four new architectures that will be used across all VW group brands.
Volkswagen believes the new plan will help the company build cars faster, cut development times by up to a year and reduce costs by 25 percent to 40 percent.
Of course you can’t catch Toyota overnight, Volkswagen sold 5.7 million cars last year, and hopes to reach 10 million by 2018.
Ulrich Hackenberg, VW brand board member for development, is completing development of VW’s new transverse-engine architecture (MQB) for small, lower-medium and upper-medium models. The new architecture could be the driving force of up to six million cars, making it the industry’s biggest platform.
“MQB is planned for a broad application, from small cars up to and including upper-medium, the first model to emerge can be expected in 2010.” Hackenberg said.
There is no confirmation as to just how many models will be based around the MQB architecture, however sources inside VW say MQB is the logical base for replacements of at least 20 small, lower-medium and upper-medium models, plus additional new niche models.
Current models include VW’s Fox, Polo, Golf, Jetta, Beetle, Touran, Caddy, Eos and Passat; Audi’s A3 and TT; Skoda’s Fabia, Roomster, Octavia and Superb; and Seat’s Ibiza, Cordoba, Leon, Altea and Toledo.
Will Volkswagen sacrifice quality in the quest for numbers? Only time will tell.
Print it: 
So long as the quality and depth of engineering of the current cars isn’t compromised, I wish ‘em full speed ahead.
Agreed, and also their products don’t become anything like Toyotas in terms of design and drivability.
Dont VWs have a prity bad record in terms of reliability…in Australia at least? Enough of VW becoming Toyota, maybe the other way around…
Do they think Toyota are going to stop where they are now,also what about GM etc.they are dreaming.
Not as bad as your spelling,Corolla Crazt.
My Golf hasn’t been perfect in terms of quality.Cruise control had to be replaced under waranty, for instance. But it’s damned good. What makes it my favourite car ever (I’ve had 15, all told) is its completeness of design and function.
I had a brand new Camry once whose cylinder head gasket and 3rd gear synchromesh both expired at around 45,000 km, and both were common problems on the Camrys in our fleet. That’s why I get a bit jaded by the “Toyotas are so wonderfully reliable” line.
Good luck with your fully galvanised body shell
Shall we try, “warranty”? Note to self, be careful how you accuse others.
They’re out of their league when they want sales. Particularly in the largest auto market, the US, Volkswagen can’t get a hold in sales. Even in Australia they aren’t brilliant. They should set their sights lower first.
Indeed, JW. Whether they achieve it is another thing. Their strengths lie in other parts of the world at the moment, not here and America.
Lets just hope they (VW) don’t bring themselves down to Toyota’s level (as it was said) by designing uninspiring cars that handle and go poorly.
Generally competition improves the breed, that is until you start campeting on how much you can undercut someone. In the end we consumers will lose due to even further poor build quality and workmanship.
Cheers
Steve
VW has a long way to go before catching up to Toyota, the only car company I see that is capable of doing so in the long run are Honda and Hyundai.
VW does have a strong market in China, if anyone has been to China they will know that almost all taxis are VW’s.
One thing that many people (car enthusiast) always seem to forget is that Toyota has mastered the art of selling to a mass market, it doesn’t matter if the car is FUN to drive or attractive to look at. if it is reliable, quality and gets the job done and doesn’t look awful. THAT IS ALL. Yes my family has a Toyota Camry and it is the most reliable vehicle he had for a LONG time.
Good luck VW, someone needs to challenge toyota now that
GM and ford are no where!!!
Just remember everyone VW is made up of 8 brands Audi,Bentley, Bugatti, SEAT, Skoda, VW and VWCV.
All will contribute to the 10 Million sales that Volkswagen AG is aiming for.
That’s really a skyscraper order. VWs are costlier to maintain, and nowhere near Toyota’s reliability. Along with performance and technology, build quality is very good, as expected of German cars, but it takes much more than that to trounce on the Japanese. VW claim they’re more advanced than Toyota, but who makes hybrids? Audis, which are starting to look uglier, are no BMWs in terms of excitement, Benzes in comfort, and Lexuses on dependability. If they can’t keep the design great, there’s really no sense in buying the 4-rounded badge over the blue/white propeller, the 3-pointed star or the dynamic L.
VW has a very attractive range of cars,and models like the Jetta are proving to be hugely sucessful.
Much more desirable than either a Corolla or Camry.
The facts are:
volkswagen are trying to catch up to toyota’s reliability and profitability, toyota is trying to catchup to volkswagen’s design, drivability and perhaps desirability.
In a sustainability view point i hope both manufacturers will be using the best possible environmental ethics while trying to dominate the auto industry.
By the way, chinese buy more volkswagens over toyotas because they generally still prefer not to buy japanese stuff because of dark historical rivalry, which is ironically quite the opposite in australia, considering australia’s dark past in WW2 with japan, maybe us auzys get over things more quickly or something. By the way, in auz toyota brainwash’s people with advertising everywhere, they are very determined to convince us we should buy a new toyota every three years, that equals mass consumerism, that equals arrogance and taking things for granted!
Sorry to seem like a hysterical hippy but they are the facts, like it or not!
Post script, i personally think honda or even mazda have a better chance at catching up to toyota in the a to b vehicle category, because that is the category volkswagen should be counting. Even i think that and i myself own a newish volkswagen and not a honda or mazda. I think volkswagen should firstly try to catchup to the benchmark honda in terms of fit and finnish and reliability before even thinking of catching up to toyota.