It was bound to happen sooner rather than later. The European sovereign debt crisis that started in Greece and spread to other countries including Cyprus, Portugal, Ireland and Spain, is beginning to have a deeper effect on companies like Volkswagen.
The continent’s largest carmaker has cut its internal 2012 sales target for Western Europe by up to 140,000 vehicles, the German news daily Handelsblatt reported on Friday.
“The VW group is tentatively selling more cars this year than last year. But it is correct that it will be somewhat less than what was originally planned,” Bernd Osterloh, the group’s works council head, told Handelsblatt, according to Reuters. “We are talking however of a maximum of 140,000 cars,” he added.
In September, VW said that it does not expect the European auto market to rebound for another year or two.
Despite the dent in its European sales projection, the German group remains on track to overtake General Motors in 2012 as the second-biggest carmaker in the world and reach 10 million annual sales by 2018, up from 8.36 million in 2011.
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