VW dealers welcome sudden influx of new-car inventory

The manufacturing change was introduced Tuesday by Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess at the automaker’s once-a-year push convention, and it was one of a variety of messages from VW brand names this 7 days signaling resiliency in the encounter of various production and logistics crises. A spokesman for Volkswagen of The us declined to provide clarification beyond Diess’ comments. Having said that, vendor resources informed Automotive News that the range of further cars would be in the tens of hundreds.

In 2021, 73 % of the 375,030 new VW cars offered in the U.S. have been crossovers. Volkswagen of America has been seeking to take care of its way by the microchip crisis by concentrating manufacturing as a lot as attainable on a lot more rewarding crossovers though shifting chips absent from the low-margin Jetta. Put together profits of the two Atlas designs ended up up 32 per cent very last year to 115,687, while profits of the compact Tiguan grew 9 p.c to 109,747. The subcompact Taos, which began arriving on dealership loads a calendar year in the past, experienced amassed 31,682 profits by the close of 2021. VW reports its profits quarterly and will report first-quarter sales in early April.

Like their counterparts at other manufacturers, VW sellers have been running for months with incredibly lean inventories. As of this week, they had just 7,000 new automobiles on hand nationally, about a 10-day provide, a seller source claimed.

Tom McMenamin, chairman of the Volkswagen Nationwide Seller Advisory Council, verified sellers ended up anticipating to “see a substantial selection” of more North American-crafted automobiles heading to their loads. He reported obtaining far more new motor vehicles to sell “is heading to make all the variance in the world to the dealers, and it truly is likely to give us a competitive advantage in our markets simply because we’ll have products and solutions and most of our opponents will never.”

John Luciano, vendor principal at Avenue Volkswagen of Amarillo in Texas, stated the further cars ended up past welcome: They would probably allow for his retail store to match the 1,167 new-auto revenue — and document profitability — that it strike past yr as a substitute of wanting at up to a 25 p.c volume reduction for 2022.

“We have felt so snakebit for so very long as VW dealers that now we should have an possibility to attain current market share, which has been our purpose right here because 2015,” mentioned Luciano. “If those quantities keep up, that is going to make me a whole large amount happier to be all over.”