Quote:
Originally Posted by OUGrad05
Oh but I disagree, R&D money will make a difference but it takes 3, 5 or 7 years for that money to show up. Also the Jetta and Passat are pretty good cars in their respective classes but yes I agree they aren't connecting with US consumers. VW is still overcoming their reliability reputation of the 90s through mid 00's.
They also seem to never advertise.
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You can engineer great products but it won't matter if no one is buying them (I'm speaking only in the US since they do quite well elsewhere). In the US market, Honda and Toyota resonate much better with consumers than VW does and VW either isn't offering what Americans want, or can't market their products to the US market effectively.
I'm not the only one who thinks so:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-1...isappoint.html
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schum...swagen-america
Hopefully they spend the R&D money wisely and can actually market this stuff to Americans better in the upcoming model generations.
It is interesting though, Audi almost went belly up after their "unintended acceleration" disaster in the 80's and reliability in the 90's. Now look at them. Interesting how they were able to turn it around so quickly but their parent company is still spinning their wheels and trying to figure out how to gain a more solid foothold in America.