Jett wrote:
If you want a quality vehicle you buy a Toyota
Scotty? Scotty Kilmer?
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if you want a luxury vehicle you buy a mercedes.
Here's the thing: Mercedes used to have very good engineering and build quality - though I will thoroughly admit that they were never without their issues. However, as they increasingly became a volume manufacturer throughout the 1980s and 1990s (which has continued on to today) while expanding their model range increasingly downmarket, their engineering efforts and build quality have fallen off considerably.
About the only thing that keeps them afloat is their badge. Every time I see a GLA or CLA in traffic, all I can think is that the driver is fooling no-one and has set themselves up for incredibly expensive service bills until the lease is up.
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Where does VW fit into this model? That’s all my point is.
And that's a fair question. Here's the best answer I can give:
VW - as they sit now - isn't aiming to sell luxury cars. They're aiming to sell very nice cars that offer a bit more than their competitors in the same market segments in terms of feel, both cabin and driving. They're also moving heavily into electrification, both of their model range and energy supply.
Admittedly, they did make an attempt at selling into the quasi-luxury and luxury markets about 10-15 years ago. It didn't work out for them, but the cars that they were putting forward in that segment (particularly the Touareg and Phaeton) were actually really great vehicles that only suffered from having the wrong badge on them.
My father owned a 2006 W12 Phaeton that he bought in (IIRC) 2010. That was an astoundingly brilliant car, and with the advantage of being a complete stealth vehicle - lacking the body and badging of the Bentley it was derived from, it was a total sleeper in addition to being incredibly good at what it did.
I'm under no illusions that our 2012 Jetta TDi is a Phaeton. It's not even close. But it is a well-made, reliable, great-at-what-it-does vehicle. We're planning on running it until it's either legislated off the road, self-immolates, or meets its fate at the hands of a collision.
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I would rather have the headaches of a mercedes because at least you have a mercedes then.
Hopefully, the badges on that vehicle will provide you some respite while you're staring at them from the waiting room at the dealer's service department
Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Infiniti, Acura, Cadillac, Lincoln, others - I have to giggle a bit at the perception of these as being luxury vehicles. They're not. Certainly, they have nice specifications and are arguably built better than their stablemates from elsewhere in their respective corporate hierarchies (where applicable), but when I can throw a rock in traffic and have it bounce off of any of a dozen so-called luxury vehicles before it hits the ground, I really do have to wonder as to how much the vehicles actually offer vs. their many owners' ability to sign a lease.
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VW are doo doo. No offense about your taste. Jeep is doo doo too, but at least they dont pretend to be top tier luxury.
Just wait for the Wagoneer coming out in the next year or two. That's going to push Jeep into the six-figure-mass-luxo-SUV territory that the Range Rover has been occupying for the past couple of decades. It'll be interesting to see how successful or not they are in that segment, given that it's not one that Jeep has previously fielded vehicles in and in which they have zero experience.
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