The success of VW Group is to offer a wide range of product with a common technical basis, but applying a pricing strategy quite different regarding each brand of the Group, mainly Audi, VW, Seat, and Skoda.
The future Audi A1 is a great example of this strategy: this car will be the bottom-of-the-range of Audi, which cannot resist to compete with BMW with its Mini on the premium small cars (NB: urban cars priced over 15.000 €: Mini, Fiat 500, Alfa Romeo MiTo, Future Citroën DS3…). While all its competitors are developing a complete new product from the scratch, Audi uses an internal resource: the VW Polo (NB: information given by the Magazine “Automobile Magazine”, August 2009, #759). This source also informs of a possible basis price between 15 and 18.000 €, and talks about engines’ sharing between these two models: 1.2 and 1.4 TFSI, and 1.6 TDI.
As a consequence a (non-informed) customer will buy a Polo for 5.000 € more just to get the Audi logo! The customer will buy a Volkswagen for the price of a BMW or a Mercedes… Somewhere this is bluffing the customers…
Anyway, this strategy is not used for the first time and is already working for a few years at least: basically what is an Audi TT? Simply, take a VW Golf, put a coupé bodywork, put a Audi logo and your TT is ready! And the market will accept it a real “new” model…
At the end, this is almost just a question of packaging… But under the bodywork, the car is exactly the same…
Probably VW is making huge synergies, but is “selling a Polo with Audi price” respecting the customers?
Source of the Picture: http://www.automobile-magazine.fr/media/galeries/photos/audi/a1/audi_a1/(photo)/26658#galerie_top
