VW Budget Brand to Get Green Light in 2013 - Will Focus on India and China

All automakers now want a piece of the Dacia recipe, and more than one manufacturer has announced a ‘budget sub-brand’. One of these manufacturers is Volkswagen, which has just announced that their cheap sub-brand will be getting the green light in 2013, if it is to get it at all, as it is not yet decided.

According to the group CEO Martin Winterkorn, “The decision whether we will produce a model for emerging markets will be made later this year [ . . . ] We need time, but we will do it.” They also need to localize development and production, to get the right product, for the right market and for the right money - “It needs to be fully localised,” as Winterkorn himself clearly states, then adds “you need low productions costs and all the suppliers to be low cost too.”

The main question which was on everybody’s mind is what the new brand is going to be called, and will its offerings wear a VW badge? Well, the answers to those questions are ‘we don`t know yet’ and ‘no’. The name which will be given to the new brand will bear no resemblance or link to anything ever used in VW’s past, and it will be designed to be meaningful to the Chinese market in particular.

The cars will be first sold in China, then possibly in India. Europe and other more western markets will not be able to buy these cars, and they will be exclusive to Asian markets - we would also add Russia as a possible extra market for these new cheap VWs.