Volkswagen: World cars do not work!

Volkswagen's head Dr. Martin Winterkorn replied to a General Motors statement that he does not believe in world cars as the market are too individual. We can't agree more, nobody wants a world car.

Martin Winterkorn, Volkswagen’s chief executive, said on Thursday that the days of building one car for the whole world were “dead and buried”.

VW will introduce 20 new models in the next three years, including vans and pick-ups, as part of a plan to sell 8m cars by 2010 – up from last year’s 6.2m.

Mr Winterkorn said he hoped to beat Japan’s Toyota in sales and profitability, as well as other measures such as customer satisfaction and quality, although he refused to give a timescale.

“In the coming years, we will make the VW group the world’s most international carmaker. The days of a ‘world car’ are dead and buried. Our customers in China or India expect us, as a global player, to offer entirely different solutions than we do in the US or western Europe,” he said at VW’s annual press conference.

Related news: GermanCarBlog, P4MR, Volkswagen

Source: Financial Times, picture by Motor Trend

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