You’ve undoubtedly heard the rumors that the VW group is looking to change its name to Auto Union and that it was looking to either buy the entire Fiat group or just Alfa Romeo.
Apparently, all were valid leads to a degree, since they were all considered but in the end the decision was taken to make sure the company is stable and profitable form the inside, before going ahead to expand.
The ultimate goal would have been to have create the largest automaker ever, one that would have had a 17-brand roster and a sales figure of 15-ish million by 2020.
Autocar published an article that adds more details to this story. It seems that VW is actually experiencing a reduction of profit from the core VW brand (in spite of better sales?), the one which accounted for 5.9 million of their 9.7 million yearly sales figure for 2013.
The first order of business now is to cut costs as much as possible; VW may even resort to completely getting rid of money pit models like the Eos and ones whose market validity is still questionable, like the Up! (and derivatives) or the Scirocco.
By Andrei Nedelea
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