Million-selling Golf continues success story

The Volkswagen brand sold roughly 1.16 million vehicles from the Golf family -comprising the Golf hatchback, Golf Variant, Golf Plus and Jetta- to customers all over the world in 2007, resulting in a ear-on-year increase of 8.2 percent. The classic hatchback version of the Golf remained the brand’s best-selling model with a total of 586,100 units delivered to customers - a rise of 5.5 percent.

“The egalitarian Golf offers top quality and is ideally suited for every target group. Moreover, its value stability remains a very attractive factor,” Detlef Wittig, Executive Vice President, Group
Sales and Marketing, commented.

There was an escalating increase of 45.8 percent in deliveries to the USA, the largest overseas market, with sales of the Golf hatchback version totaling 41,800 units. High rises were also achieved in Canada (+ 66.3 percent to 15,800 units) and Brazil (+55.6 percent to 13,400 units).

Respectable growth was also reported on the large European markets of France (+ 11.8 percent to 32,700 units), United Kingdom (+ 7.7 percent to 67,100 units) and Italy (+ 7.5 percent to 48,500 units). As a result, the Volkswagen classic again made a crucial contribution to the brand’s record-breaking sales of 3.66 million vehicles worldwide (+ 7.8 percent).

Despite tough conditions, Germany continues to be the undisputed top market for the Golf, where the hatchback version braved the general trend in vehicle deliveries on the German market (-9.1 percent) with sales totaling some 123,200 units (-5.9 percent). In Europe, Volkswagen delivered 420,000 units to customers, 2.8 percent up on the previous year. This was in part attributable to high growth on Central and East.

European markets such as Romania (+67.4 percent to 5,400 vehicles), Russia (+76.5 percent to 4,500 units) and Poland (+45.1 percent to 4,500 vehicles).

In Singapore, the Golf model range, consisting of five members - the Golf 1.6, Golf GTI, Golf GT Sport, Golf R32 and the Jetta 2.0 FSI, was equally popular. Dr Olaf Duebel, Managing Director, Volkswagen Group Singapore, said, “In Singapore, the Golf GT and the Jetta generated the most interest from buyers and contributed significantly to our total sales volume.”

Joining the local Golf family this year and extending the TSI engine range, are the Jetta 1.4 TSI and the Golf 1.4 TSI, both expected to launch by mid-2008. Besides housing the successful award-winning TSI engine, the Golf 1.4 will also feature the highly-anticipated 7-Speed DSG.

Credits: Kr0n