New Volkswagen Polo BlueBT is now available to order with prices starting from £17,400 on the road.
Tag Archives: VW
Volkswagen Polo BlueGT Priced From £17,400
VW to buy Proton?
VW is said to be considering yet another bid for marginal car brand, Proton, according to industry website just-auto.com. Proton was set up basically as a vanity project by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir to demonstrate that Malaysia was a modern country. It did well at first by assembling Mitsubishi Lancers, but suffered from delusions of competence, and did more of its own engineering over the years, with the result that quality fell through the floor. UK market share has fallen from 1% in 1992 to 0.02% last year.
VW now more Asian than European
While the French government has crisis talks about job losses at Peugeot, VW sales continue to soar. Worldwide sales for the first half of 2012 were up 8.9% to a nice round 4.5 million units.
Sales in central and eastern Europe were up 27.3% and sales in Germany rose 4.4%. Only Western Europe excluding Germany saw a fall of 5.7%. Sales in the USA were up by 22% and Asia saw a rise of 17.6% – to an incredible 2.8 million units.That means more than half of all VW group cars are now sold in Asia. That is why VW is the only “European” mainstream car manufacturer that is still doing well – it is not really European any more.
New Seat Leon range announced
Seat has shown the first pictures of its third generation Leon, to compete in the Focus/Golf segment.It is based on the MQB platform, developed by parent company, VW, which you are going to hear a lot about. It is a common architecture that will underpin everything from Polos to Passats. VW reckons it is a revolution in car manufacturing and will enable the company to reap vast economies of scale: a figure of 5 million MQB units a year is quite possible.
VW struggling to meet demand in the UK
VW is struggling to meet demand in the UK, especially for the Up city car. According to industry website, www.just-auto.com, most buyers are having to wait two months for an Up, and there are also said to be shortages of the Golf GTI and the Passat. The problem, of course, is that cars have to be specially made for the UK and Ireland, as Europe’s only major right-hand-drive markets. VW cannot simply divert cars no longer wanted by crisis-hit markets in southern Europe.
