VW plans to double Australian sales by 2018

Volkswagen is poised to double its sales in Australia by 2018 – a move which will likely see European luxury cars become more affordable than they've ever been locally.

Australia is very much a part of Volkswagen's global target to overtake Toyota to become the biggest car maker in the world within the next eight years, according to Volkwsagen board member Dr Ulrich Hackenberg, who addressed Australian media at a briefing prior to the Paris motor show overnight.

"Australia is very much a part of our growth strategy," he said. "I think we are still too weak in Australia. We have a lot of potential to grow there. We know Australia is a growing market and we want to grow with Australia. We are not at the level we want to be."

"We are strong in Europe, South America and China, but we are very weak in Asia and the USA and we must fix this. There is no reason why we should have lower market share in these countries and for us there is big potential."

Anke Koeckler, the managing director of VW Australia, said: "You can assume that we have the opportunity to double the volumes from where we are right now. We have a lot of product coming, there are a lot of opportunities. I don't want to give you exact figures but we expect good growth."

She said it was likely Volkswagen would overtake Honda but not Hyundai.

"We beat [Honda] twice this year already. As far as Hyundai is concerned, we don't want to sell cars like hot potatoes. We also want to make a bit of profit.

"Honda I'm very confident we can overtake them. But I will not do some stupid things just to get a better rank in the [sales] ranking."

Volkswagen currently ranks 10th in the list of top selling manufacturers locally. With a tally of 25,250 sales in the eight months to August, the German brand is narrowly behind Subaru (27,500) and Honda (28,000). The gap to Mitsubishi (41,000) and Nissan (42,000) is greater. But if Volkswagen doubled its sales today, it might almost outsell Hyundai (55,000).

However, it's unlikely Vokswagen would outsell Hyundai locally in 2018 given that the Korean maker is also embarking on an aggressive model expansion and global sales drive.

Nevertheless, Volkswagen has a big 12 months ahead, expanding its 15-model line-up with at least five launches including Passat sedan and wagon and Amarok ute, as well as variants of popular models such as the Polo GTI hot hatch.

"From the product point of view we expect to have strong chances of growth," Koeckler said.

Meanwhile, Dr Hackenberg said Volkswagen would get to its global number one ranking without acquisitions. For example, Volkswagen won't count Japanese maker Suzuki's sales as part of its tally, despite a recent technology sharing agreement.

"Suzuki is a good fit, a good co-operation," he said. "If you look at the strengths and weaknesses of VW and Suzuki, it's a good fit. But it's a technical partnership."

He said Volkswagen was going to embark on a massive model expansion – and build cars in more countries – including North America.

Next year VW will begin building a new large front drive sedan based on the Passat but designed to compete with the Honda Accord.

VW sells 250,000 a year in the USA currently but wants to sell 800,000 there annually by 2018. With a further 200,000 Audi models (up from 90,000 currently), they hope the combined tally will exceed 1 million sales.

"Our target is to be beyond Toyota," he said. "But first of all we need to create a lot of cars, then the other part is to produce them globally in plants all over the world."

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