Production｜Tiger sniffing car group

Author｜Hu Yang

Title Map｜Hu Yang

The Volkswagen Group headquarters in Wolfsburg is preparing a brand reorganization that will affect the overall situation.

As we all know, the Volkswagen Group has long been not the “national car” before World War II. Not only does it have many brands, but it also has no shortage of top luxury cars. Audi, Lamborghini, Porsche, Bentley, Bugatti, such an all-star lineup, help the Volkswagen Group get rich all over the world. However, now, resources have to be freed up under severe transformation pressure. Volkswagen is seriously considering where these luxury car brands should go.

There has been some movement on this matter last year: Volkswagen Group “insiders” revealed to European media that in Volkswagen’s 2030 vision, only Audi and Porsche are determined to remain, and other luxury car brands are precarious.

The new news now is that Volkswagen Group will assign the Bentley brand to Audi in 2021, Lamborghini, which was originally owned by Audi, will have an independent IPO, and Bugatti will be sold to Croatian electric supercar manufacturer Rimac——Porsche, which belongs to the Volkswagen Group, bought 10% of the latter in 2018< /a>. In addition, Ducati, an Italian national treasure motorcycle brand owned by Audi, is also likely to be sold.

Although everything is still rumored, if you are familiar with the brand lineup of Volkswagen Group, you will find that this is a relatively comprehensive and reasonable arrangement.

The Volkswagen Group expanded rapidly and swallowed one luxury car brand, mainly during the 90s when Ferdinand Piech was in power. As the grandson of the founder of Porsche Ferdinand Porsche, Ferdinand Piech not only inherited the name of his grandfather, but also achieved commercial achievements comparable to those of his grandfather. Under his promotion, the Volkswagen Group brought Lamborghini back to life, reborn Bentley, and spared no effort to make Bugatti an industrial miracle that shocked the world. The Volkswagen brand has also invested heavily in the construction of transparent factories and built the flagship model Phaeton to boost its brand status.

In the era of Ferdinand Piech, Bentley endorsed the high-end brand of the Volkswagen brand, especially the Volkswagen flagship Phaeton.

(Phaeton and Transparent Factory)

However, due to the interweaving of various internal and external factors, Phaeton finally failed to get a happy ending. In 2015, Ferdinand Piech faded out of the management of the Volkswagen Group. In 2016, Volkswagen officially announced that the Phaeton would cease production. In this context, Bentley launched the Bentayga Bentayga almost at the same time, becoming one of the first ultra-luxury brands to set foot in SUVs. But Tim Yuet failed to replicate Porsche’s “Cayenne myth” at the time. The SUV was actually just a squeeze Some orders for GT and cars are gone.

Bentley’s situation is not an isolated case. Each of the jewels of the Volkswagen Group faces an uncertain future. Due to its own history and development, Lamborghini must continue to adhere to a naturally aspirated engine, even if it adds hybrid power, it will not introduce turbocharging. And its parent company Audi has been with Volkswagen and Porsche, Invest a lot of resources in the research and development of two pure electric platforms MEB and PPE. The hybrid technology that matches the naturally aspirated engine, especially the hybrid technology that can be shared with Lamborghini, is difficult It will become the focus of Audi’s research.

In the gasoline era, the significance of Lamborghini to the Audi Group(Audi, Lamborghini, Ducati) is first concentrated on the use of Lamborghini technology The Audi R8 sports car, and then Audi provided the Lamborghini SUV Urus with a 4.0T V8 engine. In addition, Audi also exported advanced and stable electronic systems to Lamborghini.

But in fact, in terms of the relationship between Audi and Lamborghini brands, these technology sharing and cooperation are far from enough. The most typical example, although both attach great importance to and rely on four-wheel drive technology, Audi’s quattro four-wheel drive technology based on front-engine cars/SUVs cannot be directly used for Lamborghini’s mid-engine supercars. Now, Audi has invested resources in pure electric vehicle platforms on the one hand, and on the other hand, is committed to electrification technologies such as electronic turbines, which are gradually moving away from the direction that Lamborghini wants to adhere to. When the Audi R8 based on Lamborghini technology is coming to an end, the basis for cooperation between the two parties is even less.

When there are fewer and fewer common languages, naturally there is no need to have different dreams in the same bed.

Launched Bentayet SU at BentleyTwo years after V, Lamborghini brought its own SUV model Urus in 2017. Unlike Bentley’s situation, due to the extremely low overlap between Lamborghini’s original product line and SUV, Urus quickly copied the Porsche Cayenne myth and instantly nearly doubled Lamborghini brand sales. So much so that Lamborghini officially stated that it will control production to avoid excessive expansion.

The success of Urus undoubtedly confirms Lamborghini’s brand value to the outside world: As long as it is willing, it is not difficult for more high-end consumers to pay. This “outside” can once be the Volkswagen Group, but in the future it can also be an external investor.

Before Lamborghini, Ferrari went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2015, and Aston Martin went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2018. Although they all sound like top luxury cars, their fate is completely different: Ferrari’s stock price has quadrupled in five years, while Aston Martin can’t stop. Looking back now, Lamborghini has used Urus to prove its brand appeal and ability to attract money, just like the “voting for fame” before independent solo flight.

Audi “exchanged” Rambo with Bentley. Another underlying logic is that Bentley’s ongoing transformation meets the needs. Volkswagen’s discontinuation of the Phaeton means that Bentley’s position as Volkswagen is no longer stable. After the death of Ferdinand Piech in 2019, the future of several brands that he advocated to introduce into the Volkswagen Group has become more precarious. Bentley tried to prove profitability with SUV to no avail, and the new direction is “Return to the outstanding Coachbuilder”.

This is an ancient term, which is older than automobile history. In the early days of the car’s birth, the chassis and body were sold separately. In the past, Coachbuilder, which built luxury carriages for guests, began to turn to car body manufacturing. Bentley’s partner Mulliner at the beginning of the brand was a Coachbuilder, which was incorporated into Bentley in 1959 and has since become Bentley’s personalized customization department.

Now, Bentley has brought Mulliner back to the stage.It is no longer just a custom workshop for top guests to enjoy privately, but has transformed into a new sign that showcases gorgeous shapes and extravagant craftsmanship. At the beginning of this year, Bentley Mulliner released a limited edition customized model Bacalar . Contrary to the Aston Martin, who took great risks at all costs, transformed to build a mid-engined supercar, and tried to run to the track to compete with Ferrari and Porsche to prove his own Aston Martin, Bentley chose to return to his best Coachbuilding business , Continue to go to the extreme on the road of luxury and luxury.

Speaking of inserting a sentence here, don’t think that Volkswagen, Bentley, and Audi are all “a family” with left-handed and right-handed. In fact, even if they are under the roof of the Volkswagen Group, they should belong directly to the Volkswagen Group or belong to Audi first The interests of the whole public are also different. No organization is monolithic, let alone a huge enterprise like Volkswagen Group.

At this time, Audi needs too much to improve its declining brand image. For a long time, Audi has largely relied on its dominant position in the Chinese market to keep pace with Mercedes-Benz and BMW on a global level. In the past three years, the competitive landscape of the Chinese market has changed. (As predicted in “A Practice in Front of Audi”) Audi has completely fallen Behind Mercedes and BMW. Audi urgently needs to stabilize its position and improve its brand image as soon as possible and bring brand premiums back to the front line in order to break out of the vicious circle of high discounts and low transaction prices.

In the Chinese market, one of Audi’s priorities this year and next is to fully introduce and promote S and RS series high-performance vehicles. Previously, Audi paid far less attention to the Chinese performance car market than Mercedes-Benz AMG and BMW M. The Audi RS series has a serious lack of presence, and high-performance cars are precisely the most direct means for the BBA luxury brand to enhance its image. In this segment, Audi can only say that it is late but late.

For the global scale, Audi has been in the flagship level (A8/Q7/Q8) after years of hard work and painstaking efforts, but it is still difficult to compete with the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, The BMW 7 Series sits on an equal footing. Since Volkswagen has long since abandoned the Phaeton, If Bentley can merge into Audi, it will play the role of Rolls-Royce to BMW. Bentley is working hard to consolidate its own Coachbuilder identity concept. The most convenient role is to help brands like Audi raise the ceiling of flagships.

At the technical level, Bentley’s existing GT sports cars and sports cars are based on the Volkswagen Group’s MSB high-end platform, and SUVs are based on the MLB Evo that Audi also uses. At present, the intersection of the two on the mechanical level is actually greater than the Audi and Lamborghini brands. Bentley made an early decision to embrace pure electricity, and would never abandon the internal combustion engine (even insist on natural aspiration) in the short to medium term Lamborghini, obviously Bentley has become a more suitable choice for the Audi Group in the future.

Because of its physical limitations, Bentley is unlikely to be able to independently develop a new pure electric platform. It is a wise choice to share the PPE pure electric platform after the marriage with Audi. Audi provides technical and resource support, and Bentley helps to raise the brand ceiling-this is a classic model of win-win cooperation between luxury brands and ultra-luxury brands.