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Volkswagen to beat Toyota with quality & beauty : Car Advice | News Blog

Volkswagen to beat Toyota with quality & beauty

December 11, 2007 by Alborz Fallah  




Volkswagen group CEO Martin Winterkorn is counting on the German attention to detail as well as better looking cars to help his company beat Toyota as the global No. 1 within 10 years.

Strategy 2018, a plan devised by VW to become the No.1 manufacturer is counting on “German perfectionism and better design” as VW’s advantages over its Japanese competitor.

Volkswagen not only aims to beat Toyota in terms of overall sales, but also productivity and profitability.

According to sources inside Volkswagen, the company actually believes a sales supremacy can be achieved as early as 2014, but Mr Winterkorn would not comment on that issue.

“I cannot discuss internal goals. But we want to be in 2010 where Toyota is now.” Said Winterkorn

Martin WinterkornThis year Volkswagen is expected to sell 6 million cars, an increase of 300,000 from last year. Toyota sales figures for this year are still not confirmed, however the Japanese company managed to move 8.8 million cars in 2006.

Going by those figures Volkswagen will need to increase sales and productivity by a staggering 10% a year to match Toyota’s manufacturing efficiency. Winterkorn is well aware that Toyota produce cars at a lower cost:

Every Toyota produced in Japan has a cost advantage over VW of €3,000 ($7,000 AUD) to €4,000 ($9,250 AUD)” he told Automotive News Europe.

Talk of product efficiency instils fear of dull and lifeless cars coming out of Volkswagen, but with the company’s acknowledgement of better looking cars as one of its strengths, we should not fear another Big T.

More importantly, with Volkswagen investing considerable amounts of money into the likes of Lamborghini and Bugatti, it would be a mistake to class Volkswagen as an A->B manufacturer.

Volkswagen logosNonetheless, there is talk of a more efficient management with VW Group production chief Jochem Heizmann noting “production lines will become shorter and processes quicker.

Volkswagen seems to be following a slightly different strategy to Toyota with the company planning to invest $22 billion (AUD) in the next three years for the development of 20 new cars.

One thing Toyota has done well in the last decade is produce cars specifically for our North American friends while the Europeans have tried and mostly failed to make headway with European models. But that is all about to change.

We added too many technical items that [American] consumers don’t want to pay for, because they don’t need them,” Winterkorn Said.

As an example he cited collapsible external mirrors that are useful in narrow European streets and parking lots but serve little purpose in North America.

Part of the big push will come from Volkswagen’s new family of small cars, expected to sell 1 million units a year. Cars such as the Up have a lot to live up to.

Volkswagen Up

Do you think Volkswagen will turn into Toyota? More importantly, with challengers such as Hyundai lurking in the background, will the people’s car achieve its aim of world dominance by 2018?

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Comments

55 Responses to “Volkswagen to beat Toyota with quality & beauty”
  1. galanis says:

    volkswagen best! best ! best commercial cars. I prefer %100 this ute its the best. I think that its a good quality… bill galanis

  2. hans kaiser says:

    i prefer the car for 35 years best german quality volkswagen.. i love volkswagen… hans kaiser

  3. hans kaiser says:

    volkswagen best best best top quality top power TDI I LOVE VOLKSWAGEN… HANS KAISER…

  4. BILL says:

    im driving a volks wagon because im a professional driver. bill…

  5. Toyota Paul - ONE MORE POST ONLY says:

    “VW is a below average performer in both surveys, belying its reputation for building high quality, reliable cars”

    mynrma.com.au/cps/rde/xchg/mynrma/hs.xsl/brand_reliability.htm?cpssessionid=SID-3F5768EC-0E01D207

    “The figures confirm similar surveys overseas, which have shown that US- and European-built cars largely lag behind Korean and Japanese cars on quality…. for example, some Volkswagen models recorded a higher than average number of actual faults but figures”

    drive.com.au/Editorial/ArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=39115&IsPgd=0

    “VW has slipped in the European JD Powers initial quality ratings to 34 out of 37 manufacturers ”

    answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060623131602AAWoBrf

    ———–

    Toyota rules, Volkswagen should go back to producing hippie kombi buses and volkswagen beetles for mexico. Enuff said

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