Volkswagen Barely Escapes Going The Red In 2015 With A .04% Sales Gain In January

Volkswagen of America, Inc. today reported sales of 23,504 units delivered in January 2015.

 The all-new Golf family continued to find success in both deliveries and accolades. In January, at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, the Golf and Golf GTI were named the North American Car of the Year. Golf family sales in January totaled 4,199 units, which includes 2,040 Golfs, 1,978 Golf GTIs and 181 e-Golf units. The Golf family continues to expand in 2015 with the addition of the much anticipated Golf R which goes on sale later this month. Five hundred pre-orders of the Golf R were filled in less than a 12 hour period last month.

“We are encouraged by the continued success of the Golf family, in fact it was one of the best months on record for Golf family sales. We look forward to the new additions of the much anticipated Golf R and Golf SportWagen later this quarter,” said Mark McNabb, chief operating officer, Volkswagen of America.

The Jetta, refreshed for the 2015 model year now with a suite of driver assistance features, continued to show its strength as a core model, with 8,320 units delivered.

The Touareg, refreshed for 2015, delivered 482 units, 257 of which were Clean Diesel TDI, amounting to 53 percent of sales of the model.

The Chattanooga-built Passat totaled 6,305 units delivered for the month. The Tiguan delivered 1,473 units.

carsnyc - 2/3/2015 1:03:39 PM

+2 Boost

Subaru sells more cars than VW in the US.

I bet they didn't see that one coming!

280SE - 2/3/2015 2:54:16 PM

+2 Boost

VW's American-specific targeting seemed clever at first, but they are behind the 8 Ball now. While they were busy building a bigger US Passat, and chuckling about obese Americans in their board rooms, the US market started seeing a lot of features/details that now come as standard (or as less costly upgrades) on competitor vehicles (nicer rims, all-wheel drive, backup cameras, cool infotainment screens, etc). The US is not as simplistic a market as VW might have initially calculated.

Also, with the US currency strengthening aggressively right now vs other nations that are entering quantitative easing (Europe, Japan), the move of creating US based manufacturing is working against them as these goods are now relatively less-affordable if exported outside the US.