Volkswagen Delivers Record Sales in 2017, More Than Half in China

Cars and Drivers

Published: January 15, 2018 8:05 am

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 4:29 am

Volkswagen reported Monday morning that worldwide deliveries of the company’s Volkswagen brand vehicles reached a record high of 6.23 million units in 2017. The results are 4.2% better than the 5.98 million VW-branded units sold in 2016.

Just over half of sales (51%) were made in China where the VW brand delivered 3.18 million units, a year-over-year increase of 5.9%.

In VW’s second-largest market — Western Europe — deliveries totaled 1.43 million units, down 2.5% year over year, and in its home country of Germany sales fell 4.7% to 531,600 units.

In North America, VW sales rose 1.9%, and in the United States the increase was 5.2% to 339,700 units. For the month of December, however, North American sales dropped 12.3% and U.S. sales tumbled 18.7%. Sales in Canada rose 53.7% in December to 4,200.

December deliveries in China were up 12.9% year over year to 342,100 units, a new record for the month and the best-ever monthly total in the country.

Worldwide December deliveries reached a record 594,100 vehicles, up 5.6% year over year. Delivery figures for the company’s Tiguan family rose 38% in 2017. VW noted that global deliveries of the Tiguan family came to 720,000 units, the model’s best year ever.

In a comment, Jürgen Stackmann, Volkswagen Brand Board Member for Sales, said:

I am particularly pleased to see that incoming orders for electric vehicles in Germany and Europe have tripled compared with 2016. We will be stepping up the pace of our model offensive even further in 2018, with momentum coming from important new models such as the Polo, T-Roc and Touareg.

The company’s Audi brand delivered 1.88 million units last year, and the Porsche brand shipped about 246,000 units.

VW is in a close race with Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) for the top spot in worldwide sales. Toyota has said it expects to report sales of 10.35 million units for 2017, counting the company’s Daihatsu and Hino brands.

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