Big Talk Or Careful Planning? Volkswagen Says They Will Double U.S. Sales In Next 3 to 4 Years

With VW being one of the most unreliable companies around maybe all the money spent on repairs will fix the economy, I hear that they are more reliable in Germany, but still thought of as the bottom of the bunch.

You might want to checkout those figures again and then look at the real world result to the avg driver.

Buick which is the best has an avg of 1.22 visits to a dealer over 4 years.
VW is 2.63 visits. Since you can't have a point .2 visit you have to round higher in both case for the worst case.

So Buick is 2 visits over 4 years of ownership and VW is 3...

Somehow that logic makes one potential visit a non factor overall in my decisions.

Agent009, I assume Math was not your favorite subject. It does not make sense to round you an average. What you really want to do is take a sample of 100 cars.

This means for there were 122 visits per 100 buick cars where as there were 263 vists for 100 cars for VW. You can clearly see that there are twice as many visits for VW for 100 cars in 4 years as compared to Buick. This is completely different to the conclusion you came up with.

monster- per 100 cars is correct. But I typically don't buy cars in quantities of 100. Mine are closer to one at a time. so 122 visits /100 buicks = 1.22 visits overall per vehicle (the qty I tend to purchase each time). My math and your math both hold up, it is all about how it affects the owner not the fleet.

there is a yet better way to interpret these studies. CR publishes a chart "How they age" which plots no. of problems per 100 vehicles, vs. the vehicle age.

if you draw a line across the 100 problems point, you can see how many years each mfgr's vehicles will last before ALL have one problem on average. for vw, this happens at about 5.3 years. hyundai, gm and chrysler are bunched at ~5.6 - 5.8. ford gets out to 7 years.

nissan gets out to 10 years.

the age axis only goes out to 10 years, so one has to extrapolate for honda and toyota. for honda, it's ~11 years, and toyota goes all the way out to 17 years! (that explains toyota longevity and the legions of loyalists.)

In Texas, every Diesel Engine car that VW imports is sold before it gets to the Dealer...

All VW has to do to increase sales...is to increase the volume of Diesels

I agree there are a ton of VW diesels in the DFW area!

the bar for getting a CR "Recommended" is not very high. the car MERELY has to not be likely to kill you, and have at least "average" reliability.

that CR recommends one VW now, basically means that previously, they were all BELOW average.

the Recommmended tag does NOT distinguish between "average" and "above average" reliabiities.

but it IS noteworthy when a maker gets ONE Recommended out of SIX models, vs. ELEVEN out of fifteen!

VW (and I assume) will need more product and/or take share to pull this off. What's popular that they currently don't have:

1) Hybrids - they're coming.
2) Pickups - I thought I saw a concept on the web recently.
3) Light commercial trucks like the Ford Transit Connect.
4) Crossover bigger than TIguan and smaller than Toureg

(2) and (3) can really pump the numbers up.

I'm guessing the lynchpin is Suzuki not just vw cars

yup, that seems to be VW's way of increasing sales numbers: just buy yet another brand!

Getting back to the subject at hand. Perhaps by building the cars in Tenesee qulity and reliability will improve. Also the new "Jetta Coupe" points to VW's take on the "american" interior. If you look at the squarish shapes with the silver aplique surround it almost mimicks a 80-s to 90's "American" interior.Weather VW will be able to triple their car sales remains to be seen.

TS--

WOW! seems you REALLY want to waste a lot of time, energy and space dissing toyotas, just to distract people from the extreme craptitude of vws. to save you some time in the future:

1) rusting frames were due to the suppliers not doing the rustproofing adequately. had NOTHING to do with toyota designs, quality, workmanship, or reliability.

2) THAT SAID, toyota has BOUGHT BACK many tacomas, even when they have NO USE for these used trucks. basically, they just TAKE THE HIT for supplier shortcomings. same with the <30 tundras with bad camshafts. (they didn't buy the whole truck, but gave BRAND NEW ENGINES.)

3) most toyota owners/fans KNOW all this. you will not dissuade a SINGLE would be purchaser from a toyota.

4) VW issues still cannot be swept under the rug.

"At least six year old VWs don't crumble into piles of rust."

but by year six, EVERY SINGLE VW (AND AUDI) WILL have a problem. (see above)

some will be minor, but there'll likely be some involving the engine or tranny BLOOWING UP.

in contrast, by year SEVENTEEN every toyota will have a problem too. extrapolating from repair charts, MOST will be with minor stuff like a worn out wire or something.

Agent009 - And they let you work for this website. Did your math class figure in the number of people that now use the internet to research their cars. I do much of my car buying homework on the internet, and even have purchased some of my vehicles via the internet. Wait a minute, what about some of the auto company's "direct delivery programs". You don't have to travel to BMW's overseas factory to buy a car. In South Carolina you can go to their test track and plant there to take delivery of your car. GM has a program like that in Lake Orion, Mich where some Cadillac are made. If my memory serves me correctly, weren't you the person who posted inaccurate performance numbers about the new Audi A4 when it initially came out.