Comment on Job losses likely at VW as the people’s car brand becomes uncompetitive
grue@lemmy.world 9 months agoThe line extensions into higher end never worked and required a new brand for these higher level offerings in the end. They never learned from this lesson. Brand identity can win the day but also lose it all for you when you try to shift from a popular product.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that VW didn’t understand they needed a luxury brand for higher-end cars? 'Cause they’ve got Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini and Bentley…
WashedOver@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Yes but at first they tried to release the high end product under the VW brand. The Phaeton was one of the best engineered vehicles failures ever produced as many did not want to buy a higher end car with the VW economy badge on it. Brand does count for a lot even when a lower economy brand has a superior made product, the masses cannot always move beyond that. I’m sure there are many that lived that VW Phat on and were happy for owning it, but commercially it didn’t fit.
grue@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The Phaeton was a weird aberration that I agree should’ve been a different brand, but it definitely wasn’t “at first.” Audi had been owned by VW for decades before the Phaeton came out.
WashedOver@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Well that’s a more blatant recent model. Paying $70,000 for a VW wasn’t something many would even consider in the early 2000s and yes Audi existed so it was a really odd double down on line extension of the VW line.
The earlier creep was from the original identity of VW with the it may be ugly but it gets you there marketing. For it’s time was a great way to describe the brand and the place in the market. Think of the older VW buses, rabbits, Transporters, etc. Not beautiful in relation to cars of their day but bloody practical.
Due to markets and human conditioning they weren’t going to show up and copy Ford or GM designs and expect to have a chance at taking market share. Their positioning in the lower end of the market made it their’s for a long time like the upstart Japanese.
They all came in with smaller, economical to run cars and the big 3 struggled to compete. And when the big 3 tried, they were terrible at it for quite a while. The mini Mustang comes to mind along wth the Monza and the Pinto. Cult vehicles but not market darlings. AMC tried different things due to the success of their Jeep brand with luxury 4x4s and 4x4 cars. New markets. They only survived for so long due to the Jeep brand.
Now all the brands overlap with models and offerings a great deal more but there are still things they are all respectively good at. Full size trucks are mostly a Big 3 market despite excellent product from Toyota. There’s a large segment of the US population that doesn’t consider Toyota products to be real trucks despite many saying they are far better quality. The list goes on…