Volkswagen’s May Sales Collapse 17%

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 7:18AM EST · Published Jun 2, 9:50AM EDT

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Volkswagen’s May Sales Collapse 17% — © courtesy of Volkswagen of America Inc.

Volkswagen’s problems in America are hardly over. It faces fines and legal challenges, as well as a brand the value of which has eroded at an unprecedented rate. VW sales in May fell 17.2% and so far this year are off 13.1%. The pace of the challenge has accelerated.

VW sold 28,779 cars and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) in May. It sold 123,205 for the first five months of the year.

The decline also exposes one of VW’s major issues. Its lineup is so small that the drop in diesel sales cannot be replaced by other models. Its Golf line had a sales decline of 29.1% in May to 4,475. Sales of the Jetta sedan dropped 13.5% to 10,943. Beetle sales fell 56.1% to 1,178. Passat sales shrank 12.8% to 7,129. That is the entirety of VW’s lineup, with one exception. Sales of the Tiguan rose 42.7% to 4,394. The Tiguan is VW’s inexpensive SUV.

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VW has a smaller variety of cars and SUVs than any other major foreign car manufacturer. Its selection is also dwarfed by those of Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler.

For the time being, VW will be fortunate if its sales decline simply moves into the single digits.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.