William Maley
Editor/Reporter - CheersandGears.com
January 14, 2012
The Volkswagen BlueSport concept, a mid-engine diesel powered concept shown at the 2009 North American International Auto Show has been hitting some bumps in the road to production. According to Autocar, the future of the BlueSport is in danger due to the company not finding enough sales to justify it. The biggest problem lies with Volkswagen of America, which believes having a sports car in its U.S. lineup is low-priority at the moment, even though Volkswagen has a plan to sell 800,000 vehicles in the U.S. by 2018 and the U.S. being the world’s largest market for sports cars.
“To get to 800k units, we don’t need to keep adding to our portfolio of models. We’re concentrating on our core models,” said VW of America boss Jonathan Browning.
Without the backing of Volkswagen of America, the BlueSport likely won’t get anywhere near the roughly 50,000 projected global sales per year it requires to get off the ground.
“There is no official release for the project. It’s not a technology problem, but of finding enough customers. I don’t have enough [sales] volume to get the go-ahead,” said Volkswagen’s engineering boss, Uli Hackenberg.
Hackenberg said the enginnering of the vehicle is done, now they’re just waiting to see if Volkswagen can make a business case.
The delays are also causing the BlueSport’s design to date quickly which could play a factor into whether the vehicle is produced or not. Also, the delays are causing problems for Audi and Porsche which are producing sister models to the BlueSport.
Source: Autocar
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