VWoA ( media.vw.com ) reports US sales for 2009 were 213,454 vehicles. 2008 sales were 223,128.
This is a net loss in sales for VWoA.
213,454 vehicles sold in the US market makes VW A niche seller.
If not for the ” Cash For Clunkers ” program this number would be substantially lower.
VW has had to have taken a substantial loss (again) in the US market.
VW has advertised heavily and has offered substantial discounts on their vehicles.
They are trying to push their sales to 500,000. This is not going well.
VW’s past history of selling poor quality cars and not standing behind their products is coming back to haunt them.

A week old, but still interesting. Porsche’s attempts to achieve majority stake in VW fell short this last year due to the global economic downturn. Instead of Porsche taking over VW, it looks like they’ve decided to… merge.

CNN article

Come on… at least the looks don’t suck.

From Motor Trend.

The last paragraph is particularly interesting:

While Porsche may now own Volkswagen, the saga is likely far from over. So long as Lower Saxony retains the power to stop changes at Volkswagen, they can effectively nullify Porsche’s actions. Acquiring a majority stake, though, makes it clear that Porsche is serious about this takeover and expects to win its court battles. However, if it fails to get the “Volkswagen Law” repealed, Porsche will simply be a majority shareholder of Volkswagen, but will not actually be able to control the company. Given that the European Commission has sided with Porsche, though, it’s like that Lower Saxony will lose its blocking power sooner or later and Porsche will be able to take complete control of Volkswagen. Considering how hard fought the takeover has been so far, it’s not likely the issue will be complete resolved soon — or neatly.

No, I’m not talking about the upcoming election. I’ve spent the summer annoyed with spammers, so finally my previous threat has proven true. Welcome to WordPress. I’ve moved all posts and comments over, and no one should have any trouble logging in with their username and password.

I’ve made VWVictim an Editor along with peterd1965 and good old rick, the original author of VW Sucks.

So welcome. And here’s the new Scirocco to get things started.

(you can post YouTube videos simply by pasting the URL except changing the http:// to httpv://)

Suck it, spammers.

I’m thinking of porting this site over to using WordPress as this code is looking pretty old and the spammers are getting annoying.

I won’t do anything until I can safely port over all valid users (those who have actual posts that weren’t spam) and the posts over.