Volkswagen was founded in 1937 and since then the company has grown in an unstoppable manner, since its inception has incorporated other brands of automobiles into the Volkswagen Group, composed by Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, Skoda, Scania, Volkswagen and Volkswagen commercial vehicles. The Volkswagen Group is the biggest Builder of cars in Europe and in 2009 was ranked third in the ranking of manufacturers around the world according to the international organization of builders of automobiles (OICA), behind Toyota and General Motors. Although the sector is experiencing a difficult situation due to the global economic crisis, Volkswagen was able to increase its sales through the figure of 6.29 million units according to the latest official figures. Not everything is good news for the group because four of its brands failed to benefits: Bentley (with a loss of 185 million euros), Lamborghini (35 million euros), Bugatti (194 million euros) and SEAT (339 million euros). Ripple spoke with conviction. But the Group has in mind a plan for revitalize these brands and not deviate from its long-term objective, which is none other than ousting Toyota as the world’s largest manufacturer by the year 2018.
One of the main goals of the group to achieve its final objective is the revitalize the American market, this has released to the United States market the Bentley Mulsanne, which hopes to increase sales of its extremely luxurious cars division and reconquer a market niche characterized by a strong brand loyalty and that has not been affected by the crisis. This model has been built manually and for its manufacture took 800 hours of work, which explains its high price of placing on the market and of its exclusive components, even the smallest repair would be costly, e.g. change of a luna would require one greater investment than usual due to the price of the glass. In regards to Bugatti, the Group has placed their hopes on the launch of the Bugatti saw Super Sport, vehicle that occupies the second place of the list of most expensive cars of 2010 according to the magazine Forbes. As for Lamborghini, the division of brand in America has devised a new financing plan in collaboration with Volkswagen Credit according to which programmes of alternative financing and better interest rates for buyers who want to purchase the most exclusive models on the market and which meet certain requirements of credit will be provided. In addition, the Group acquired through Lamborghini 90.1 per cent of the Italian company Italdesign Giugiaro, dedicated to the design of automobiles, this acquisition joins Volkswagen expansion measures. Mark posed the greatest headache for the group is SEAT. The Spanish brand managed to reduce its losses and increase their sales in the first half of 2010 compared with the same period of the previous year, but is still deficient.
The stakes of the group to revitalize the SEAT brand are confirm leadership in the Spanish market and make an important investment in research on vehicles powered with alternative energy sources. Once achieved these objectives, the company will attempt to increase its presence in the Asian market, most specifically in China. All these measures are part of the ambitious plan devised by Volkswagen to try to unseat Toyota as the world’s largest manufacturer of automobiles in the year 2018. According to the plan, Volkswagen plans to increase sales of the Group of 8 million units in the mid- and 10 million by 2018. The key elements of this plan are an ambitious plan of expansion and growth in the United States market.
