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ELLMAU, Austria — During a related Volkswagen drive event here in the Austrian Alps, VW spokespeople from Wolfsburg offered up a tantalizing bit of news: The company will establish its own new performance division, R GmbH. The official announcement will be made at the 2010 Geneva Auto Show in March.
As an executive told Inside Line: "BMW has its M, Mercedes has AMG, and our sibling Audi has Quattro. This new R division will be our Quattro."
The new R GmbH is an expanded version of the Europe-market VW Individual, an entity that offers a vast catalogue of sporty personalization items for customers' standard VW cars. For example, the CC R-Line was recently announced and was displayed at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show as a formal set offering within the CC lineup.
So far, North America has seen bits and pieces of Individual division R-Line offerings through the VW GearStore or in a few rare special editions. Although the company was gauging interest by showing the CC R-Line at Detroit, it has not said whether it will introduce it in the U.S. market.
The R division of the Wolfsburg factory is to begin creating from-the-ground-up R versions of every appropriate model in the VW showroom, as recently seen on the 266-horsepower Golf R with 4Motion and the 261-hp Scirocco R. The Golf R, at least, is rumored to be heading to North America in early 2011.
Inside Line says: Technically now that it's the world's number-one car manufacturing group (thanks to a Suzuki majority stake), VW's leaders are thinking even bigger thoughts. Hope they think of the U.S., too. — Matt Davis, Correspondent
As an executive told Inside Line: "BMW has its M, Mercedes has AMG, and our sibling Audi has Quattro. This new R division will be our Quattro."
The new R GmbH is an expanded version of the Europe-market VW Individual, an entity that offers a vast catalogue of sporty personalization items for customers' standard VW cars. For example, the CC R-Line was recently announced and was displayed at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show as a formal set offering within the CC lineup.
So far, North America has seen bits and pieces of Individual division R-Line offerings through the VW GearStore or in a few rare special editions. Although the company was gauging interest by showing the CC R-Line at Detroit, it has not said whether it will introduce it in the U.S. market.
The R division of the Wolfsburg factory is to begin creating from-the-ground-up R versions of every appropriate model in the VW showroom, as recently seen on the 266-horsepower Golf R with 4Motion and the 261-hp Scirocco R. The Golf R, at least, is rumored to be heading to North America in early 2011.
Inside Line says: Technically now that it's the world's number-one car manufacturing group (thanks to a Suzuki majority stake), VW's leaders are thinking even bigger thoughts. Hope they think of the U.S., too. — Matt Davis, Correspondent
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