VW: Moonraker program will be permanent!

VW's boss Wolfgang Bernhard announced at the Detroit Motor Show that VW's Moonraker program for the US will be permanent and not a one-time effort.

The once top-secret effort, headquartered near the Los Angeles suburb of Malibu, was set to wrap up at the end of June, but will now be attached to VW's new advanced design center alongside the Santa Monica Airport. "It was an experiment for us, and a risk," said Bernhard, during an interview. "But it has paid off well."

VW is likely to come up with specific new products for the U.S. market. An extreme example made its debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show earlier this month. "The GX3 is one of the outcomes of (the Moonraker) project," noted Bernhard, referring to the open-cockpit three-wheeler he says could go into low-volume production in 2007. More mainstream vehicles could follow. The U.S. will now play a lead role in the development of products primarily earmarked for this market, meanwhile, such as the next Jetta, which begins development this year. Even global vehicles, such as the Golf, will be influenced by American tastes, Bernhard said.

Moonraker "will continue," Bernhard added, and not only out of the advanced design center in Santa Monica. According to Adrian Hallmark, the new head of VW operations in the U.S., the automaker intends to set up a replica of the Malibu Moonraker house at corporate headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. It will provide employees a place to go during product development to become immersed "in a bit of Americana."