It’s been a full ten days since I’ve led off a Morning Dump with Volkswagen. I checked. While some of my articles have trended toward the negative, I am genuinely excited about the new brands that Volkswagen is planning to bring to America. If I were a dealer I’d probably be a little less enthusiastic.
The big news this morning is that Volkswagen’s Cupra brand is in talks with Penske to help launch the brand in the US by 2030. That’s now two different brands launched by VW here and both, it seems, without traditional dealers. Volkswagen isn’t alone. Hyundai and Amazon have been experimenting with doing something, but so far there hasn’t been much there there. It seems like there was a good reason for the delay.
Lately, I’ve been writing about how the impending Trump presidency brings with it a lot of confusion. The USA’s major OEMs are in a weird position as there are a lot of changes they’d support, though revoking the IRA tax credit doesn’t seem to be one of them.
And, finally, Northvolt just filed for bankruptcy.
Here Comes Cupra
I called Cupra “Europe’s coolest car brand” when it was announced in March that the Volkswagen brand would be coming here at some point in the future:
The cars look great. Walking around England I kept seeking out Cupras and saw a couple of Formentors and, I think, a León driving the opposite direction. As with Škoda, Porsche, Audi and other VW brands, these are all just different flavors of modular VW platforms, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t all great. A spicy crawfish etouffee and a simple bechamel both start out as a roux, if you catch my drift.
As mentioned in the article, Cupra is a spinoff of Volkswagen’s Spanish brand SEAT, which was once a Fiat-affiliated automaker. A few years ago, SEAT thought it would be cool to focus Cupra as its own unique entity with performance-focused ICE, hybrid, and electric vehicles. That was one of Volkswagen’s biggest wins of the last decade, and the brand has such great momentum that VW said it would bring the company here.
I’m not alone in my appreciation of them around here, either. It’s not just a weird Matt Hardigree thing!
Today, Volkswagen announced that Cupra and Penske Automotive, one of America’s biggest dealer groups, would be a potential partner for the brand’s launch. This makes a lot of sense, as Penske Automotive’s store mix skews heavily towards Volkswagen Group products.
So what’s the company saying?
“CUPRA’s ambition is to be a truly global brand and expanding into the United States represents one of the greatest milestones on our journey,” said Wayne Griffiths, CEO of CUPRA. “We have great respect for the U.S. market, recognising that a strong distribution and retail strategy is essential for success. By entering into preliminary discussions with Penske Automotive Group, we are exploring opportunities with the best possible partner, one with the right distribution network to introduce CUPRA to a new generation of American car lovers. Penske Automotive Group’s leadership in the industry and experience with the Volkswagen Group make this a very promising potential partnership” continued Wayne Griffiths.
CUPRA will enter the U.S. market by the end of the decade in key states that are aligned with the brand. Its range of products are expected to include ICE, PHEV and BEV. CUPRA will leverage synergies within the Brand Group Core by producing one of the models in Volkswagen factories in the North America region. To lead CUPRA into the U.S., Bernhard Bauer, the former Managing Director of CUPRA Germany, has been appointed as the new Managing Director of CUPRA USA. The final location for its headquarters and details of the specific model lineup will be announced at a later date.
Hmmm…. Hmmmmm.
The “synergies” bit almost certainly means the Cupra Tavascan, which is a meaner/faster ID.4 that could easily be made in Chattanooga, right? That makes a lot of sense to me, although 2030 is a long way away so it could be something else.
What’s interesting here is that Cupra will sell ICE, PHEVs, and BEVs here. Volkswagen also has a brand that could do that, which is conveniently called Volkswagen. There’s a version of this that feels like Volkswagen is just replacing the weak VW brand, tossing away about 80 years of mostly good vibes. What’s the point of having both VW and Cupra, even if Cupra is slightly sportier?
Then there’s Scout. Volkswagen’s coolest new product is not going to be a Volkswagen, it’s going to be under another brand that will be sold without dealers. Dealers, predictably, are furious with VW over this and threatening to tie all this up in court. The Cupra tie-up with Penske doesn’t sound like a traditional dealer model but some sort of hybrid (I imagine seeing Cupra products in Penske stores and serviced at Penske dealers but actually sold through an app? Perhaps each store gets one Cupra specialist? Just spitballing here).
All automakers look at Tesla’s margins and dream about being able to cut out their dealers.
Hyundai-Amazon Deal Ramping Up In January
Amazon and Hyundai announced they’d do something at last year’s LA Auto Show and everyone assumed that meant selling cars via Amazon. That’s not quite what’s happened yet, and the Amazon-Hyundai deal has mostly not had a big impact on the market.
There’s maybe a good reason for that. There was a plan for a bigger launch this summer but the CDK Global ransomware attack ended up stalling the whole thing. Now a year after the initial announcement, Hyundai’s Jose Muñoz explained to Automotive News that it’ll maybe happen in January of 2025.
What’s interesting, is that in limited trials Hyundai discovered that some people still want to go to a dealership:
As for dealer concerns about the customer’s journey once they complete the sale, Muñoz asserts the new platform keeps the sale with the dealer.
“The contract is between you as a customer and a dealer, not with Amazon,” he said.
Muñoz also said despite consumers expressing interest in wanting to buy cars online, almost all of them want to visit the dealership to take delivery of the vehicle, underlining the importance of physical dealerships.
“They want to go to the dealer to get the car themselves,” he said. “That’s also a discovery and one of the reasons why a lot of dealers have seen this not as a competition, but as something that reinforces their sales.”
Another path to get into a dealership is likely good for dealers, and it’s not like Amazon has ever undercut its own partners before.
Automakers To Trump: We Like Some Changes
Politics is the art of compromise and, if done right, there’s usually some give and take. If you’re a major OEM that’s a part of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation then you’re probably cool with slowing down the EPA’s new tailpipe rules, though likely less onboard with removing the $7,500 tax credit.
Reuters reports that the Alliance, which includes GM and Toyota, sent a letter to soon-to-be President Trump stating they’d love it if the administration did a few things in addition to keeping the credit:
The letter, signed by the group’s CEO John Bozzella, said automakers face unfair competition “from heavily subsidized electric vehicles and technologies exported from China” and also noted that China was implementing a regulatory framework to support deployment of self-driving vehicles.
The group also asked Trump to reconsider rules finalized in April requiring nearly all new cars and trucks by 2029 to have advanced automatic emergency braking systems. The group earlier said the rules are “practically impossible with available technologies.”
What’s interesting is that Trump’s new Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, was formerly a lobbyist for General Motors.
Northvolt Files For Bankruptcy
Well, that was fast. On Monday we pointed out that Northvolt was in trouble and now the Swedish battery company has filed for bankruptcy, admitting it’s got $5.8 billion in debt to deal with.
The Swedish electric vehicle supplier will seek to restructure under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, it said in a statement on Thursday. Northvolt had about $30 million in available cash, it said in a filing, and $5.84 billion in debt.
That figure makes it one of the most indebted companies to file for bankruptcy in the US this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It’s followed closely by Intrum AB, another Swedish company that logged a similar petition last week.
Northvolt was supposed to be Europe’s way of fending off battery companies in South Korea and China.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
My daughter is disinclined towards getting ready in the morning, so my wife thought it would be best to toss on some get-moving music. What better than Fatboy Slim’s “Acid 8000,” right? If this song don’t make your booty move, your booty must be dead.
The Big Question
If Volkswagen Group sells Scout, Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Bugatti, Scout, Lamborghini, Ducati, and Cupra in the United States does it really need Volkswagen?
VW needs to follow the advice of Colin Chapman’s cousin: Simplify and add buttons (and colors).
Northolt’s business strategy was to go around Europe asking for subsidies and protection from competitors. Not surprising they couldn’t compete internationally when demand inside Europe didn’t meet expectations.
To bring a tiny bit of balance to my political bitching of the past couple of weeks, this is a thing the current administration did that I always thought was stupid. If there’s a silver lining to the mass deregulation that’s probably about to happen, this might be it.
This is though the same thing the industry always does when tasked to improve something/anything, a few big players complain and say it’s impossible and then someone like Honda just buckles down and gets it done, and often in advance of whatever deadline is imposed.
Those CUPRAS might seem cool and all but VW’s real problem is that their cars are overpriced. Nobody is going to buy a $60,000 electric Bus just as much as nobody would pick up a more expensive restyled Golf.
A Cupra Leon tends to be cheaper than an equivalent Golf. And certainly the SEAT Leon is cheaper than a similar Golf, so although it is just a restyled Golf, they are not necessarily more expensive. Fully agree on the Buzz though.
It sounds like VW is aiming to make Cupra a notch above VW in the hierarchy. That means that though a rebadged Golf may sell for less than the Cupra in say EU, it should be more pricey in the US.
That’d be extremely ironic.
A Cupra Leon is more expensive than a Seat Leon… which are exactly the same car.
The standalone cars (Formentor, Born or Tavascan) may make sense, but then what do you do? Replace Seat with Cupra? Make them share dealer networks? Establish a standalone network?
It seemed like it was going to be the first option, but now Seat is getting a second chance, so who knows. In any case it seems like VW’s bottom end segment is getting crowded…
I know, I drive a SEAT Leon. It was £6k cheaper than the equivalent Golf, and £4k cheaper than the Cupra Leon. SEAT and Skoda are at roughly the same price point, then you have Cupra, then VW, then Audi. Where I live, SEAT and Cupra are sold at the same dealer.
Here in the land of SEATs (and Cupras, I guess) they are also sold in the same dealers, at leas for now. There is even a sort of flagship store in Barcelona called Casa SEAT (and not Casa Cupra, although it features Cupras too).
My question is if there is space for all those brands in the long term. And I think the answer might be no.
The id.Buzz is yes, but allocation of those sounds like it’s going to be pretty thin. For the rest of VW’s mainstream lineup that’s not been the case. Even ignoring the healthy incentives VW. has been offering, every model starts at a much lower price than a comparable Honda. Taos is 1500 less than an HR-V, Tiguan 1k less than a CR-V, Atlas 2k less than a Pilot, Jetta over 2k less than a Civic.
Granted Hondas run expensive, but if we look at Hyundai, most of those VWs (Atlas aside) are within a couple hundred dollars in range to the equivalent Hyundai.
Now jacking up the price for similar models in better clothes isn’t a solution either but lowering prices even more isn’t really the fix here.
It’ll probably be too late for us to get a Formentor out of it, which sucks, and doesn’t get me very excited.
I never wanted a crossover as badly as the VZ5. Going down the road with all the bland 4 cylinders and all you hear is that 5-cylinder howling?! That’d be sick!
This is one of the problems, 2030 is far enough out that probably no current CUPRA products will ever make it here, it’s going to be all next generation models. Which, could be more desirable than the current ones, or, could just as easily be blander and uglier, which, given the general trajectory of the industry, is a strong chance
That was a very limited edition anyway.
I think VWs problem in NA is that of image.
From what I can tell, VW is a mid-ranged offering in their lineup in Europe. If you want cheaper, you look at Skoda or Seat. Not the cheapest, but a good value.
However, in America, we associate VW with Beetles and Rabbits. It was the cheap vehicle that punched above its price point with a cool personality making it a lot more fun than similar priced offerings from competitors.
The problem for VAG is that VWs are German made(at least the good ones) and that isn’t as cheap as their Spanish and Eastern European factories. So, they can’t make a cheap car at their normal VW factories and end up with non-German VWs that aren’t nearly as well built. Making a complex car designed for a German workforce at a factory with less skilled workers with a lot less QC is a quick way to get a reputation. Especially if you have to cut corners like mad to reach a specific price point.
To me, the solution is badge engineering. In the US, we don’t know what a Skoda or Seat or Cupra is. If VW stuck these badges on their German built VWs, we wouldn’t know the difference and might accept these vehicles as Buick/Acura competitors in price. Meanwhile, the VW badge could be put on Spanish or Eastern European built cars that aren’t as expensive or as well equipped and it would fit more with our image of what a VW is in America. So, a Seat would become a VW and a VW would become a Seat, because we don’t have the expectation of a Seat being a cheap car.
Is it that people want to pick up the car at the dealer to complete the sale, or they just want to figure out pricing on their own time without dealership pressure (and on what they actually have available), and then figure out for sure if they like the car before final delivery? I think few people want to buy a car without ever having sat in and drove it. But unless they’ve rented or borrowed one another time or they’re brand loyal, most would rather test drive a car and be OK with ordering it for home delivery. Tesla differs because there’s so few build varieties and the buyer is already expecting it to be different from their current car and probably has been in other 3s, Ys, etc.
I agree fully with your assertion that people don’t want to buy something as expensive and important as a car without seeing and driving one first.
The only way I’d buy a car through Amazon without seeing in IRL, would be if they offered a generous return policy. Something like if I don’t want to keep it, I could drop it off at a UPS Store, with just maybe a packing label on the windshield.
Definitely, and Carvana seems to have offered enough reassurance with the return policy value proposition that despite a rocky time, they’re pulling through.
With new cars, even if you aren’t dead set on the particular model, people don’t want to make multiple trips back and forth to a dealer, for test drives, and then again for financing and delivery that will still possibly take hours.
The best purchase experience I ever had was during the pandemic. I looked at my Q3 online and then on the lot after hours. Then did the entire transaction aside from signing through a handful of text messages and emails with the dealer. When it was time to sign, they had all the docs ready for my arrival and I was in and out in 15 minutes. Our GLI was even better in that regard as there wasn’t a pen or piece of paper in the entire transaction, I thought that was very Carvana-like for a dealership.
Coughing a lot in the finance office during the pandemic really sped things up too.
Regarding VW… they don’t need to ‘replace’ themselves… they need to get back to what they used to be… which was offering good, fun, affordable ‘people’s cars’… and they should COMPLETELY abandon the idiotic idea from the Piech-era that they’re somehow a ‘luxury’ brand.
They need to go back to being the brand that offers stuff like plaid seats and harlequin colour schemes.
Regarding Hyundai and Amazon… news of this deal makes me less likely to want to buy a Hyundai product.
“If Volkswagen Group sells Scout, Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Bugatti, Scout, Lamborghini, Ducati, and Cupra in the United States does it really need Volkswagen?”
Yes because of all those brands, VW is the only brand suitable for mass-market non-luxury vehicles. And of those brands, only Audi is a mass-market brand in a premium way. But it’s not the type of brand that would be suitable for selling a pickup truck, van or other ‘work’ vehicles.
They also need to address the reliability elephant in the room. If they were even GM levels of reliable and just simple, clean, european styled vehicles at a good price, they’d clean up. Hyundai and Kia are kind of doing that minus the reliability.
“They also need to address the reliability elephant in the room”
And I think that could be helped if they simplify their designs… reducing stuff a vehicle has means less stuff to go wrong… which could only help reliability.
In the best days of VW, the best ones to get were typically the more basic models.
Yep, VW needs to do the automotive equivalent of Muntzing, keep removing components and complexity until the car stops working, then put the last thing back in. Essentially. Simplify until it meets the bare minimum of what can be legally sold as a car, then the reliability will return. That’s essentially the formula that built the image they’re still coasting on today
That, and the basic Beetle design didn’t change for decades. Each year for the new ones they’d beef up the parts that broke. By the end, VW had a car that was was obsolete, but also pretty bulletproof. Some people (like me) think that’s a fair tradeoff.
And they did add components. I remember the year their advertising bragged that they’d invented the gas gauge.
Also, most people got them with radios, probably to play the kind of music kids listen to, you know, hippie music, like James Taylor
Yeah I want to get a Scout but my concern would be about reliability I may or may not work for a company owned by VW and the EVs we are working on yeah I wouldn’t touch them with a 10 foot pole. I do wonder if working with Rivian will help out with reliability?
It’s a funny commentary that VW’s (earned) reputation is so bad that a pretty new EV maker could speculatively be the partner offering better reliability in a joint venture.
I think the Rivian deal is for software only, so unless all their problems are software-related it probably won’t. It’ll make the infotainment easier to use while you’re broken down on the side of the road though. 😉
VWs have never been the picture of reliability. Their early success was due to price, image, and planning. It also didn’t hurt that they were available and new in the U.S. when the recession hit in ’58 (they’d been on the market in the States earlier, but they really started to take off in the late ’50s). Here was a high-quality car for a good price that got great fuel economy. And if you were looking for a second vehicle, which became a thing largely during those postwar years; two-car families were much more rare until after the war; the VW was a good choice.
They beat out their other european rivals by having a better plan. Dealers were required to stock a hefty inventory of replacement parts and stand up a robust service organization. And that was the secret: They broke a lot, but you could get parts for them and find repairs relatively inexpensively.
~time passes~
Volkswagens still break a lot, but now they’re impossible to fix, if you can get the parts, and they’re expensive to buy.
Seems like a problem.
Agreed with y’all folks here but I think VW as a brand is too far gone. It’s sad but sometimes rebuilding from scratch is easier than fixing. And no, jaGuar is not a good example of a rebuild.
Cupra isn’t cool. They are just expensive SEATs.
Well nobody wants to sit in the cheap SEATS.
rimshot!
I read “Cuppa” at first and thought VW was getting into manufacturing espresso machines.
Penske is still trying to get that foot in the door of automotive manufacturing. It’s a shame they failed to purchase Saturn, but now it seems they’re trying a different approach.
I’ve always thought we should have SEAT cars in the USA, and I don’t know why VW didn’t just sell (and possibly build) them here as VWs. I still think it’s easier to revive an existing brand than launch an entirely new one.
Skodas would probably be better. They are bigger and tend to use more powerful engines.
SEATs wouldn’t work, in the same way Fiats didn’t work either.
SEAT has done reasonably well in Mexico, always thought it would do pretty well in areas of the US with a high concentration of people of Mexican descent, similar to how Sears stores in heavily Mexican-American areas consistently outperformed ones in other places (and were therfore generally the last ones to be shut down), since the Sears brand is still very successful south of the border and came with positive associations
However, I do think SEAT would be a lot harder to sell to a wider audience, CUPRA seems like it could do a better job of covering all bases
Fiat’s problem was that they tried to build a whole separate brand and sales network around selling retro rehashes of the same 1950s design in different sizes and vehicle segments, rather than trying to be a real, mainstream brand. They didn’t have the right products to be more than a novelty fashion accessory, but if they did try to go more mainstream, it would have been impossible not to step on Dodge, which was always more profitable
I don’t think doing well in Mexico implies that they would do well in the US.
I put Fiat as a real example, but I am sure other brands with bigger / more complete lineups (Renault or Peugeot, for example) would do just as badly.
Ford or GM bringing their EDM models hasn’t usually been successful. And pretty much the same for full European brands (VW being a prime example).
Expensive European cars might succeed in the US, but affordable ones don’t seem to. I guess they are just too unsuited to American tastes.
Volkswagen once sold nearly 600,000 cars a year here. Back when the population was less than half what it is currently, what changed to cause the decline? Cars or consumers?
My gut feeling says the cars, but don’t have the evidence to support it.
It seems like the Asians are the best to adapt, but both Americans and European build cars in a certain way and seem reluctant to change.
I do agree about Skoda, especially in more recent years as their product line has evolved relative to SEAT/Cupra.
VW also owns International trucks which i believe are rebadged Tiguans.
I mean international trucks powertrain wise you can either get a Scania engine (labeled as a international) or a Cummins so you cannot even get one with their own engine anymore and their trucks are probably one of the most cheaply built trucks you can get.
Not that their later engines were any good, the maxforce’s were way over compicated and sounded like they were full of marbles. All while making no power. And the A26 made decent power but connecting rods were apparently an afterthought.
There is nothing that would lead me to believe that if VW brings over vehicles badged as Cupra that they will magically make them any different than what they are already doing. If they were savvy enough to offer Cupras with what everyone seems to want (hybrids, manuals, buttons, knobs, reliability, resale value) then they could just as easily do that with their existing VW lineup (or add others from other markets).
Plenty of people have sworn off VW the brand for good, I understand that, but that doesn’t mean they will all of a sudden look upon a new brand they’ve never heard of with favor. Those that know will know it’s another VW underneath and those that don’t aren’t going to chance a brand new name/brand unless the pricing is seriously attractive, which then will present the wrong image.
Cupras are cool conceptually, I guess, (perhaps mainly because we DON’T get them?) but really they are just the sportiest/sportier versions of SEAT models, which are essentially VW group products reworked a little.
The last paragrapsh nails it. Cupras are just more expensive SEATs. Nothing especially interesting about them.
VW should build Golfs with cloth seats, crank windows, manual transmissions, and a base price below 20 grand.
Fight me if you disagree.
You’re on. Behind the busses, 3pm, weapons are timing chain tensioners and red LED screens.
Sorry, I’m bringing a transverse rear leaf spring from a ’90 ‘Vette. Watch out for those shackles.
I’ll fight for my right to power windows. I’m bringing 4 old coil springs and a wrench.
I’m coming for the heated seats. I don’t require a weapon, my flatulence will suffice.
Then why do you need heated seats?
Bringing a rope drive from a 61 Tempest and using it as a whip
Due to supplier volumes, both manual transmissions and crank windows are more expensive than their alternatives. If you want to make 20k, you’re giving up rear doors and seats, radio, rear wiper, forced induction, any creature features. And that assumes they’ll sell enough to cover development costs.
There’s always a way. I’d source the window cranks from Etsy.
I will not fight you… I will agree with you.
Now having said that, I don’t see crank windows making a comeback as it’s simpler and cheaper from a manufacturing perspective to only offer one type of window cranking solution
And I’d love to see the comeback of the manual transmission in the Golf and Jetta… but that’s also unlikely.
The most we can hope for in the future is a Golf/Jetta that isn’t loaded with as much stuff.
And most likely that vehicle will be a hybrid or a BEV.
The “stuff” YOU don’t want costs them about nothing to include. Taking it out won’t lower the price enough to bother with (and might actually cost more, given the need to deal with the differences), and other then the dozen people like you, will turn off 99.5% of the actual buyers. You would probably only buy one used anyway.
“You would probably only buy one used anyway.”
That’s true. But having said that, most of their current stuff I wouldn’t even buy used.
And thus, I am one less person that will buy their current stuff when it goes off lease… making it incrementally that much harder for them to hold up their resale values… which in turn will affect future lease rates and in turn, competing with Toyota and Honda.
So if they’re planning for the long term, they should want to build a car that people like me would want to buy used if they are serious about competing instead of just taking the easy way out, pushing crap out the door, maximizing short-term profits and either blame the problems on underlings or let the next CEO deal with it.
They don’t make cars like you (and me, though I want different things) want because there simply are nowhere near enough people like us. <shrug>
Most people want what is being sold today – because otherwise different things would be sold. There is simply no market for hairshirt cars at the prices they would need to be sold at to make a profit. As I said, the tinsel costs nothing.
I remember the Porsche 911 Speedster from something like 30 or 35 years ago. They pulled a lot of comfort-oriented stuff out to save weight, but they left the power windows in so they wouldn’t have to crash test it again with the protruding crank handles.
They would sell dozens!
I think I need a quick explainer from someone on why this is practically impossible. Don’t a lot of new cars already have this? I mean, mine has one and it’s shit, but it does tick that box. Is it just that the requirements were that it wasn’t shit?
You got there at the end. Adding it is possible, having it not suck is beyond current state of the art.
I think the sticking point isn’t on it being required on vehicles, it’s what they are requiring it to do on vehicles. The requirement is to stop and avoid contact with a vehicle in front at up to 62 mph. There are some other requirements as well, but looking that far ahead at those speeds the risk of having false activations would greatly increase.
This advanced braking system is probably something more than what we have today, maybe detecting pedestrians or dogs or kids jumping in front of cars too.
TIL northvolt existed. Well, used to.
It would not surprise me if VW is bringing Cupra over because they think it will have a special, spicy appeal to America’s growing Latino population, or something equally horrifying.
Cupra Chaba?
There’s an earlier comment that’s already leaning that way, so I didn’t go there. But I think it would a great idea for Cupra to partner with a classic American tuner like Shelby and build a Cupra Cobra.
and put Cooper Cobras on it with raised white letters
Edit: I take that back, they only make Cooper Cobras in 14″ and 15″ sizes which…LOL
Are we seeing the classic GM-ification of VW?
We got the sporty brand (Pontiac/Cupra), the brand your parents like (Buick/Oldsmobile/Audi), the brand the investment banker drives (Cadillac/Bentley), the brand the performance guy drives (Corvette/Porsche/Bugatti/Lambo), the upmarket outdoorsy/rugged brand (GMC/Scout), the affordable brand (Chevrolet/VW).
That’s a lot of brands, not even including SEAT, for a company that’s looking to cut staffing and overhead.
Did GM ever own a motorcycle manufacturer?
They’re just doing it so take advantage of the direct-to-consumer loophole that Tesla pioneered because they can’t compete anymore. If they’re successful, watch every single car company try this. They’re trying to get as much foothold as possible when/in case theoretical homologated Chinese cars flood the USA for $9,999 on Aliexpress.
You forgot Skoda too.
I don’t think GM was ever into motorcycles, but there was a time when a couple of the domos at Harley were former GMers.
VW could reduce its American presence to the ID.Buzz and a new ID.Beetle, letting Cupra and Scout fill in the missing gaps with crossovers.
This might be The Way, if the ID.Bug and ID.Buzz were priced for customers other than wealthy boomers clinging to their youth like lifeboats in the Atlantic.
Shameless nostalgia would be a way better strategy than whatever VW has been doing for 20 years.
Then Volkswagen becomes the new Fiat (North America) and withers away once everyone who wants one of their retro cars already has one, then turns into a pointless money pit when the bosses in Europe insist on keeping in the market regardless of how much money it loses
If Volkswagen abandons the VW imprint, I fear they may roux the day.
The pot thickens…
I didn’t come here for cheesy puns. Both of you choux choux away.
The Cupra logo is kinda cool. Looks vaguely goat-like. A Cupra cabra, if you will.
Volkswagen doesn’t need the VW brand to do well enough. But I don’t think it’s necessary to cut it completely. Streamline the offerings and only offer the VWs that still have some positive vibes associated with them. I’m actually less sure that Americans will take to Cupra. But if they mostly do tweaks and rebadges, it may not cost too much to compete with itself.
They really need to offer the hybrid VWs in the US. That might claw back a bit of market share and would not require additional design/engineering. It’s baffling that they don’t bring the Euro hybrids over just to get in on the sweet hybrid money.
Had a Cupra Formentor with the Golf R powertrain on a work trip in Sweden. It was nice. No reason it couldn’t be a Tiguan R in the US.
I have driven it too and it is a bit on the boring and chintzy side. But other than that fine.
The Tiguan R itself exists in Europe, what about the Cupra makes it better than that? Reliability, durability, parts prices, there’s no reason to think any of that would be different, and now add zero name recognition for 99.9999% of the population to kill resale value. If VW wanted they could bring the Tig R over here right now. The reality though is that a Hybrid Tiguan (or Formenter) would sell in significantly higher volume than the R model IF somehow it’s considered reliable.
While I hate to say it, VW has pretty much entirely lost it’s brand identity in the US, so ditching it entirely is starting to make sense. Mk8 GTI/R have lost the manual, Jetta is aging, Atlas is on facelift 2 and is getting tired, Tiguan is getting a good looking new generation, and that’s it. There’s not much for enthusiasts, the average consumer has better options from the Japanese and Korean companies, and their upmarket brands are all varying levels of compelling enough. Only Audi is starting to slip, while Porsche, Lamborghini, and Bentley all seem to be thriving.
Bring in Cupra versions of the VWs we already get but with more Hybrids, launch scout with even 75% of what’s been promised, and revitalize Audis lineup with some updated models like a new Q7 and VW as a brand will truly have no purpose left. I’d hate to see it go, but a new brand like Cupra might be easier to implement than turning VW around. Reality is VW as a mainstream/entry level brand doesn’t have much of a future, and pushing upmarket will never work. Cupra can be the Hybrid/Sporty EV savior they need at the lower end of the market.
IDK, I expect a “youth oriented”, edgy styled brand sold in alternative dealerships to fall completely flat on its face. But maybe that’s just my own personal bias due to the fact that the Cupra logo reminds me of a shitty tribal tattoo
Isn’t this exactly what Toyota tried with Scion? It worked for a bit and then flamed out. We can probably expect the same result here.
That was a solid amount of the implication, yea. I’m not seeing much of a recipe for long term success
Because Toyota abandoned what made Scion successful really quick. The xB was a massive hit, but then the second generation was bigger, heavier, and blander, since they switched it from a rebadged bB to a Corolla Rumion, ditching most of what customers liked about the original
They also dumped the plan for short product cycles with frequent refreshes and were unable to sustain the low pricing strategy when dealer revenue took a squeeze during the 2008 recession
If I recall correctly, Scion never accomplished what Toyota wanted. It sold OK, but they sold to the same old people who recognized the Xa and Xb were a practical, reliable, inexpensive car.
Those buyers used it for Home Depot runs, not to customize like they were hanging out with Dom’s crew.
Maybe the tC skewed younger being a coupe, but the others did not.
At the time the brand was dropped, the cumulative data showed that more than 50% of all Scions ever built were sold to customers under the age of 35. The tC did skew the youngest, with an average buyer age of 29
Interesting, seems like that must have been more heavily influenced by the FR-S, iM, and iA in that latter half of the brand’s life. Though of course that’s written with some more PR speak about its success. But they did say in 2012 they expected it to drop as it had crept up over the first half of the brand’s life into the 40s.
At its highedt, sill noticeably lower than the main Toyota brand
Yeah, it would probably be more useful if they shared other model level buyer ages over time too, to see it vs. models like Corolla, Yaris, its Project Genesis predecessors. It shouldn’t be too surprising on its own that a brand of sub-$20k cars (20 years ago) skewed younger than one with multiple more expensive family oriented vans and utility vehicles, that they merely didn’t need or couldn’t afford yet. Of course they were a bit more acutely worried about Camry buyers which were old for the segment but later they started to bring that down too (per the link I shared further down).
I guess a more important metric might be that more than 70% of Scion buyers had never owned another Toyota product previously, but, then, you’d have to track whether any of them ever moved up the ladder to a Toyota and maybe eventually Lexus, instead of trading their xA in on an Outlander, and I think Toyota stopped caring enough to even attempt to track that once the decision was made to kill the brand. Overall, though, it does seem that they generally, more often than not, sold to the demos Toyota wanted them to, but the actual volumes might have been less than desired and the profit margins were too thin to be sustainable.
Agreed. I feel like a lot of the “later Scion” PR talk emphasized the first time/new buyer aspect, whereas at launch it was just getting younger folks in. Maybe that’s on the media reporting about age demos more, but it was very in at the time with market research – I think Honda named the Civic coupe buyer “Jennifer” in developing the 7th gen.
And maybe it is ever-cautious Toyota needing the sub-brand to justify making something like the tC to begin with, which did nail its target demo.
Seems almost more like Genesis, but those are nearly all different from Hyundais and had a 10 year buildup of the brand as a model name.
Cupra models would probably be competing in the same showroom as VWs, so are they going to be $__ better than the VW? That’s part of what made Scion a losing proposition at the end, a Corolla was roomier, more efficient, and could be driven off the lot for cheaper than most models.
Say Cupra pulls it off – at what point does VW get like Chevrolet and realize well, they could just be VW sales instead? Probably when they figure out how to adapt the sales model, because I don’t see VW sacrificing the main brand that much.
The “youth” can’t afford new cars.
Youth brands/cheap brands have been tried for ages and have had mixed results.
You know who figured out the gen Z/Millennial Market? Subaru (a la Crosstrek), Ford (a la Maverick) and Chevy (a la Trax). They all start under 25ish grand, have all the features one could hope for in that price point (er, Carplay mostly), and seem rugged enough for the adventures that the youths enjoy.
The issue with Scion was that they started strong in the Fast and Furious era with actual JDM imports (at least with the XA and XB), created a strong community of enthusiasts, and supported several concerts/other venues. The fall came when kids stopped subscribing to car communities in the same way, and the elderly started buying up the second gen XBs (which made them uncool).
Younger folks want to be seen as rugged, so the car to have is now the 4runner, Wrangler, lifted Subarus, etc. Anything that remotely accomplishes this at a low price point will succeed. Who knows what the landscape looks like in 10 years…
Older buyers started buying xBs from the original gen and Scion average owner age was in the 40s during the first generation of products (younger than Toyota brand but not quite the 30s). Element was the same way, designed for unemployed 20something college students or something but older buyers liked ’em. And Element had that outdoorsy versatile image too.
What’s the adage – “you can sell an old man a young man’s car but you can’t sell a young man an old man’s car.”
After 2008 the recession knocked sales off for everyone, but climbing out of it Scion just didn’t make sense and Toyota seemed to realize it didn’t need a whole extra brand taking up showroom space. They started pushing SE Camrys more in 2012 and immediately saw a drop to the average buyer age.
I came here to post that adage.