VW Passat B7 (facelift) not selling?

[Torsten]

The VW Passat is the most popular mid-range car in Germany. For some reason, the B7 (which is not a new model but just a facelift of the B6) doesn't seem to be selling very well. Although it has been available since November 2010, the vast majority of all Passats in Germany are still B6 models.

Interestingly enough, in Ukraine the sedan sells much better than the station wagon. In Germany it's the other way round: About 90% of all Passats here are wagons.

What is the Passat situation like in your country?

TOEIC listening, photographs: A florist

[Jamie (K)]

Passats in the US are built in Tennessee, and they are said to be selling well. VW sales in general are up about 35%, but that's up from bad previous years.

VW's sales went very far down the toilet in past decades, but they are now improving. VW was once the best-selling foreign car in the US, but for a while they had very narrow-minded management that suffered from a very common German belief that Americans are stupid. They tended to think that if Americans didn't want to buy the same cars that Germans think are good, then the Americans must be idiots and there's no reason to build cars for them. They refused to adapt their US models to local conditions and driving habits, and so people didn't want them. Their sales sank to record lows.

Since then, VW has changed their management and sent engineers and designers to observe how Americans drive and how they need their cars to be designed. This has resulted in VWs that are acceptable to American drivers, but the company has an uphill fight, because both the Japanese and American manufacturers now beat the German companies on quality and reliability. Now VW -- which used to be one of the highest-quality cars sold in the US -- has to play catch-up.

I owned two consecutive VWs, but the company has lost me forever as a customer. My first VW had a very buggy electrical system, and the second one had a fuel system that broke down all the time. The dealer's service departments never seemed to know how to fix them, so it was common for me to have the car back in their garage multiple times for the same problem. Now VW can improve their cars all they want, but I won't try them, because Ford is giving me much better reliability, much better customer service, and their mechanics seem to be more competent.

[Torsten]

Hi Jamie, I also think that GM have been able to improve their situation dramatically and their the number one car maker again. In the long run the Germans will have a hard time keeping up with the Japanese and American manufacturers.

TOEIC listening, photographs: In a store

[Jamie (K)]

All three of the US manufacturers have made huge improvements in their quality, and depending on the manufacturer, some or all of their cars are at Japanese quality levels now. The German companies have had problems because their management lived in an echo chamber for a while. This happens to many companies, the most notable of which in the news is now Kodak.

I found it interesting to talk to Germans in the US after Daimler-Benz took over Chrysler. Designers were leaving Chrysler in droves because design was so restricted by German management and they couldn't take risks anymore. So their very successful, award-winning design team mostly left, largely for GM, where they were just as successful. Chrysler began to turn out what Americans mostly considered boring cars, but when I talked to Germans here, some of them were excited by the models that we considered boring.