Volkswagen Santana
I was rather amazed when I saw the list of car sales over the month August at China Car Times. The car model I thought was fully out of grace, the Volkswagen Santana, is back at the top of the list.
In the 1990s the then very successful joint venture between Volkswagen and SAIC, the automotive industry owned by the Shanghai government, introduce this car model that had never appealed to the European car buyers. But since it was the only model the leading car manufacturer was allowed to produce and since it were mainly state-owned companies and government departments buying the car, nine out of ten cars on the streets in Shanghai were a Volkswagen Santana till the end of the 1990s.
Then SAIC started its love affair with GM, partly to punish Volkswagen for its extramarital affair with FAW up north, where it started to make the Audi. Bit by bit the Buick started to take over and actually became for a while the leading car model.
Obvious, now the market has become much more consumer driven, Volkswagen is doing something good. Not only is this strange product of the former planned economy back on top, in the rest of the top ten we find the Jetta of Volkswagen at the second position. the Octavia at five and the Passat at eight.
Time to look for somebody who can explain all this to me.
2 comments:
The question that arises out of this is: as an older model, does this car meet the environmental standards that Volkswagen has to meet in Europe?
If not, and Volkswagen is merely taking advantage of lax regulations in a developing country (whose government is ostensibly trying to tackle pollution) to produce a cheaper and more profitable car, then shame on it.
This question needs to be asked and the answer needs to be highlighted. Many Europeans, who are currently rightly cacking themselves about global warming would be very disappointed in VW if they were aware that a company that has a reputation for high tech products is still churning out old high-polluting models in other parts of the world.
Get on to this Fons!
The main reason the Santana is on top, is because it is not one model but (at least) 3 different models with the same name. The 30-year old model is one of them, but I am sure it is not their best-selling model. I hardly ever see a new 'old Santana' anymore, but a lot of Santana 2000 or 3000 models. The latter models are relatively big cars for a low price, so excellent products for this market.
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