Word: jetta
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...could certainly use a sexy model to turn heads its way. Only a few years ago, VW was riding high with iconic cars like the Jetta and New Beetle, vehicles that delivered performance and brand charisma. But BMW's Mini swiped the Beetle's cool factor, and lots of competitors have been making midsize value machines better than Jetta. Sales in the U.S. plunged 37% from 2001 through 2005, when VW sold just 224,195 cars. With a market share of just 1.4%, it's outsold even by Kia. The North American business is a bleeder too, losing nearly...
...help fuel a modest turnaround. Sales in the U.S. are up 11.8% through September of this year, thanks to all-new versions of the Jetta, Passat and Golf (now going by its old name, Rabbit), and Eos has sold out since debuting last month. But analysts estimate VW will lose an additional $800 million in the region in 2006, and they aren't sanguine about 2007. Until VW can address some production and quality issues, it can forget about profitable growth. "North America is one of VW's intractable problems," says Stephen Cheetham, an analyst with Bernstein Research in London...
Another element of VW's strategy involves heading downmarket, reversing a silly foray into the luxury segment with its $68,000-plus Phaeton sedan, which flopped. The company has slashed sticker prices on the Jetta (lowered $1,400, to $16,500) and Rabbit ($1,000, to $15,000), hoping to recover profits with higher volume. And future models won't contain as many standard features, according to Hallmark. The idea is to produce cars that can compete more effectively in the midmarket. Designing cars for the local competitive landscape is precisely what the Japanese have done for decades, of course...
...wife came to me three or four years ago and wanted to buy this Volkswagen Jetta and put biodiesel in it. It sounded like a big scam. I said, "You been in my Maui-Wowie again." But she bought the car, and it gets good gas mileage and the tailpipe smells like French fries. And I saw this as a way for farmers to dig out from the hole they were in and help the economy...
...learned about those debts the same day the bank did. (Journey had never asked for a Discover card or leased a Jetta.) She was the victim of the worst kind of identity theft--new accounts opened in victims' names without their knowledge, as opposed to the more common misuse of existing accounts. "My credit was destroyed," says the San Francisco-- based fitness model. Four years later, Journey, 29, still has to pay for everything in cash and has yet to resolve all the bills. "Dealing with this is like having a part-time job," she says...