Maker of awesome automobiles

The Star

By LOH FOON FONG
foonfong@thestar.com.my

Stephan Schulte, VW’s managing director for sales and marketing in Dresden.

We arrived at the Braunscheig-Wolfsburg Airport in Germany in a private jet! It had been sent by the directors from Volkswagen (VW) AG to rescue us Malaysian journalists from being stranded at the airport in Copenhagen following an industrial strike, late last month. After that, we were whisked off in a couple of Volkswagen (pronounced as Folks-vagen, meaning the “people’s car”) vehicles to our hotel.

Riding in the premium-class and silent VW Phaeton – my first experience with a VW besides the Old Beetle – and travelling on the Autobahn (highway) with no speed limit, was an experience that could be compared with no other.

It was initially frightening when the driver accelerated up to 250km/h. During the 25-minute journey, a Bugatti, also belonging to the VW Group, whizzed past us. For a moment, I thought: “Are we on another planet?”

I was worried about safety until I had the opportunity to test-drive the VW Phaeton and the Golf GTI on the Autobahn from Wolfsburg to Dresden. At one point, when I was driving the VW Phaeton V6 TDI at about 180km/h and had to apply some emergency braking, I almost panicked, half expecting my chest to hit the steering wheel and the seat belt to pull so hard that it would hurt and the things in my bag to be strewn all over.

Nothing like that happened. The Phaeton was unperturbed and held me in confidence. It won my trust from that instant.

The Phaeton is handmade in Dresden, a town known for its artistic, cultural ambience and long tradition of distinguished craftsmanship in various skills. Phaeton car buyers get personalised service and get to participate in the building of their cars. They choose their own designs which gives each car its individuality and character, said Stephan Schulte, VW’s managing director for sales and marketing in Dresden.

“We use the point of production as a point of sales as well,” said Schulte who added that VW’s motto is Build every car as though it is your own.

Costing 100,000 euros (RM450,000) upwards, the Phaeton was introduced in 2002. Special additional features are notebook table, electric sunroof, solar cells, sunshade and a small fridge. Each car takes five working days to be completed.

Last year, 23,000 units of the Phaeton were sold in Germany, half of the sales volume of the Mercedes S class, said Schulte. Its production increased by 20% last year compared with the year before, he said.

The transparent factory in Dresden makes the Phaeton and the Bentley.

“We probably need three or four generations of the car before we can bring it to the level of the Mercedes. The Phaeton is doing well considering that they are produced in a more competitive environment than before,” he said.

Why do customers choose the Phaeton over other luxury cars?

“One customer thinks it is our openness. One biker on a motorbike tour dropped by our factory and saw how we made the cars and he decided to buy a 12-cylinder Phaeton. Others like the interior and skilled craftsmanship,” he said.

Driving on the Autobahn is the ultimate driving experience; it is no wonder that German cars are known for their precise engineering and craftsmanship. VW’s tagline – For the love of cars – describes the attention that goes into the making of its cars and the amazing qualities that make driving them a safe and enjoyable experience.

The Volkswagen Group (Malaysia) was established recently and had invited the Malaysian media to visit its factories in Wolfsburg and Dresden to test out their cars.

The Golf GTI, although a much smaller car than the Phaeton, is stable even at a speed of 200km/hour. The Touareg, an intelligent sports utility vehicle, can “climb” stairs, go on hilly slopes of up to 45° and over rocky roads and logs. It can also wade through 60cm-high snow. It has an automatic braking system when going downhill so drivers do not need to step on the brakes.

The VW Group has two brand groups for its passenger cars – Audi and Volkswagen. The Audi brand group reflects the sporty image and comprises Audi, Seat and Lamborghini while the Volkswagen brand group reflects the classic image and they are the Volkswagen passenger cars, Skoda, Bentley and Bugatti.

From three-litre to luxury class vehicles, each brand retains its unique brand image and operates as an independent entity on the market.

The whole Volkswagen Group is coordinated from its headquarters in Wolfsburg, where strategically important decisions and technical innovations are made. There, almost every passenger car that zips past is bound to be a Volkswagen.

Spanning 6.5sq km, the factory in Wolfsburg is the largest among its 47 factories spread throughout the world. It produces the Golf and the Touran.

Up to 98% of the production at the factory is carried out by robots, said Alex Dumitrescu, the spokesman from the group communication and visitors’ services unit at Volkswagen AG.

The different parts of cars are produced simultaneously and they are pieced together as one, said Dumitrescu who showed us how the Golf was made at the factory.

Huge coils of sheet metal are rolled out and stamp-pressed into car body parts; six steps are required to shape each body part – doors, side panels and rear flaps – and six machines work one behind the other. Green press tools for making metal parts are carried by cranes.

The Golf GTI is a powerful vehicle.

“Welding is done by laser. It is clean and strong and hence less material is used,” said Dumitrescu.

Each robot, which looks like a big mechanical hand, has a specific function: to attach car parts, tighten screws and nuts, make spot welds or put batteries and bumpers. Another robot views a car and makes adjustments to fit the back windscreen. Fifty robots work together to weld the side panels.

“They work faster than humans and with hardly any errors,” said Dumitrescu.

The factory’s 157km-long conveyor belt system transports cars from one assembly station to another.

Workers work in three shifts and 3,000 cars are produced every day. There are 5,500 bicycles in the factory for workers to move around on.

When the upper and the lower parts of the car are ready, a robot stamps the chassis number and the “wedding” occurs – the upper part moves downwards and the power train comes up on a delivery frame from the basement and is attached to the body.

It takes 18 to 22 hours to make a Golf. The most powerful Golf is the Golf R32, a 250-horsepower car, said Dumitrescu.

When the cars are completed, they are transported via a tunnel to two 48m high transparent glass towers, a visitors’ attraction at Wolfsburg, that can store up to 800 new vehicles.

The factory also produces parts for VW car factories in Mexico, South Africa and China. There are 50,000 employees: 20,000 in the administrative section and 30,000 in the production section. Many of them have worked in VW all their lives; some families have worked there for a couple of generations. There has been no industrial strike although 97% of the workers are unionised, said Dumitrescu.

Every day 500 to 600 customers (30% of customers) from within Germany and neighbouring countries travel to Wolfsburg to collect their cars. Most make it a daylong outing for the family. They collect their cars from the KundenCenter at Autostadt, a 250,000sq m complex that features two glass car towers, pavilions for various car models (Volkswagen, Bentley, Audi, Lamborghini, Skoda and Seat), a museum of automobile history, a hotel and a restaurant, and entertainment outlets amidst waterways, bridges, lakes and parks.

Cars are polished and checked for the last time before they are handed over to customers who get 40 minutes of advice on how to handle their new cars.

Each year, 1.2mil visitors go to the Autostadt to see the technology behind Volkswagen. Entrance fee is 14 euros (RM63) for adults and six euros (RM27) for children.

Related story:

Looking East

Axel Barth, managing director of VW Group (M) Sdn Bhd.

The Volkswagen (VW) Group is eager to produce cars for the Asean region and is still looking for a local partner to produce the cars with, after talks with Proton failed.

“We foresee a 35%-45% growth in the Asean car production market because consumer expenditure is growing. As a group, we want to achieve 12% of the market share,” said Kevin Rose, executive director of sales international for VW.

In order for VW to be a market player, it needs a manufacturing facility, said Gerhard Thöne, general manager of Asia-Pacific International Sales Division.

“We’d like to see what Asians want in a car. This topic is likely to come up when we talk about local production based on the needs of Asian people,” said Axel Barth, managing director of VW Group (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd. He said for the Asian market, VW cars made would be affordable.

The models that will be brought into Malaysia as completely built-up units in the next couple of years are the Polo, new Beetle, Touareg, Jetta, Golf, Golf GTI, Passat and Touran.

The VW corporate headquarters was officially opened in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, recently.

The Volkswagen (VW) Group is the leading car manufacturer in Europe and ranked fourth in the world with more than 80bil euros (RM360bil) in sales revenue in 2004. It has established four regional markets – Europe, North America, South America/South Africa and Asia Pacific.

The Group operates 47 production plants in 11 European countries and another seven in the Americas, Asia and Africa.

Around the world, more than 343,000 employees produce over 21,500 vehicles or are involved in vehicle-related services on every working day.

The VW in Germany produces Volkswagen commercial vehicles and the Audi, while the one in the Czech Republic produces the Skoda. The Bentley is produced in Britain, the Bugatti in France, the Seat in Spain and the Lamborghini in Italy.

With seven brands producing more than 50 different models, the VW Group sells its vehicles in more than 150 countries around the world.

The beautiful Bugatti.

“There is quality guarantee regardless of where they are produced,” said Thöne, adding that the Skoda, for instance, has a good reputation although it is made in Eastern Europe, he said.

Even in difficult economic conditions, the Group managed to increase the number of vehicles delivered to customers in 2004 to 5.079 million units (compared to 5.015 million units in 2003), making up 11.5% share of the world passenger car market.

The Volkswagen story began in Germany in 1904 when engineers believed that the future of the automobile industry lay in the mass production of inexpensive small cars. Then, only the rich could afford a car. Adolf Hitler had also called for the production of cars for the masses.

Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagen mbH was established in Berlin in 1937. The following year, the Volkswagen plant was established. Later that year, the company name was changed to Volkswagen GmbH.

Between 1939 and 1945, the Volkswagen plant was reorganised for the production of armaments rather than civilian vehicles; the armaments were later produced mostly by foreign forced labour. The American troops put an end to the production of military equipment and liberated the forced labourers.

In 1945, responsibility for the company seized by the Allies was turned over to the British Military Government for administration in trusteeship and was returned to the German Government in 1949. The first Beetle was sold in 1948 at 5,300 German marks.

That cost an average worker 19 months’ salary. The lowestpriced Beetle – at 3,770 German marks – was sold in 1957 because sales volume went up during that period. Today, the average German spends six months of their salary on a car, said Thöne.