Does Volkswagen Even Care About US Sales Any More?

Cars and Drivers

Published: August 12, 2014 11:56 am

Last Updated: April 27, 2020 8:25 pm

For the first seven months of 2014, Volkswagen AG’s U.S. passenger car sales fell by 13.6% year-over-year. Globally, however, the company reported Tuesday morning that passenger car sales were up 3.8% to 3.56 million units. U.S. sales in July totaled 49,469, down 6.1% year-over-year, while global July sales came in at 491,600, up 4% compared with global VW sales in July of 2013.

The data applies only to VW-branded vehicles and does not include Audi, Porsche and other brand-name sales.

Asia-Pacific is VW’s top-selling region, and sales there have jumped 16.2% year-over-year so far this year. In China alone, VW delivered 1.6 million vehicles in the first seven months of this year, up 17.9% from the same period last year. In the region as a whole, Volkswagen shipped 1.72 million units.

German customers have purchased 340,700 vehicles so far in 2014, while Western Europe bought 517,200 units and Central and Eastern Europe accounted for 146,000 units. Sales in Germany increased by 3.7% in the first seven months of the year; they were up 5% in Western Europe and down 5.6% in Central and Eastern Europe.

U.S. sales for the year through July totaled 209,700, down 13.6% compared with the first seven months of 2013. Sales in South America declined by 20.1% for the region as a whole, and Brazilian sales were down 15%. VW sold 372,300 passenger cars in South America through July, compared with 465,700 in the same period in 2013.

VW’s woes in the U.S. are well-known, yet the company has not been able to make the adjustments that would rev up U.S. sales again. The company has focused its efforts on building cars for China, which has become its largest overall market, with sales way beyond that of any other region or individual country. The company has sold 1 million cars in Europe through the end of July, about three times more than it has sold in North America and nearly three times more than it sold in all of South America. Nearly half of all VWs sold so far this year have been in the company’s Asia-Pacific region, with fully 45% sold in China.

It’s become far more important for VW to focus on China than to worry about the Americas, North or South. The Western Hemisphere may be where old VW models go to die.

ALSO READ: Can Volkswagen Triple Its U.S. Sales?

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