Word: volkswagen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...some more operations. Its small marine products division, which makes outboard motors and boats, and its 15% investment in France's Peugeot could well go on the block. The company may also sell one or more of its U.S. engine or transmission plants to a major importer like Volkswagen or Japan's Honda and work out a deal for Chrysler to buy back some of the production. In sum, the company will have to accept a reduced role in the auto market...
...accounted for a record 24.3% of all cars sold. During the first six months of this year, while sales of U.S. autos fell 7.9% below last year's level, forcing the carmakers to cut back production and lay off workers, foreign automakers sold 14.7% more cars. Volkswagen, for its part, has been extremely pleased with the quality and productivity of the New Stanton, Pa., plant at which it has been assembling its hot-selling, 26-m.p.g. Rabbit models since...
Since that year, when it became the first foreign automaker ever to produce cars in the U.S., Volkswagen has been winning back part of the ground it lost in the mid-1970s to the Japanese trio of Toyota, Datsun and Honda. While Volkswagen's sales rose 13% worldwide dur ing this year's first half, they spurted ahead 41% in the U.S., where the company is now the fourth largest seller of foreign cars, with 3.4% of the market. Volkswagen's goal is a 5% share, and it could easily sell more cars...
Even in the unlikely event it decides against a second American plant, Volkswagen, which is engaged in a threeyear, $3.2 billion expansion program that is the largest in its history, has already budgeted about $640 million to build an engine plant in Mexico and to increase production at the Pennsylvania plant from the present 800 autos per day to 1,040 by 1981 . Schmücker's strategy is eventually to make the North American operation 90% self-sufficient, with only transmissions supplied from German plants...
...Volkswagen's moves are certain to cause other foreign automakers to recon sider their plans for producing in the U.S. Volvo, which two years ago canceled plans to start production at the plant it owns in Chesapeake, Va., might be tempted to produce its new lightweight "Car of the Eighties" there. The Japanese, who face much the same currency problem as the Germans, are bound to consider American production seriously as a way to stop Volkswagen from regaining for good its old dominance over them...