AUDI aspirations to become the world's leading premium brand by 2015 are being built around growth in markets like China and Russia but are also being hitched to a market not normally noted for growth – the United States.
Ralph Weyler, member of the board of management of Audi AG and head of worldwide sales and marketing, told GoAuto at the Australian International Motor Show in Sydney that Audi wanted to sell 1.4 million cars a year by 2015. The irony is that much of that growth is expected to come from the US where Audi is now building momentum after its long recovery from the sales disaster of the 1980s when the so-called unintended acceleration issue devastated the brand.
Audi sales in the US fell from about 80,000 a year to 12,000 units a year. "We were nearly dead," Mr Weyler said. "But gradually the brand has recovered and now we are at the level of 90,000.
"BMW at that time also had 80,000 sales but now BMW is selling 250,000. So there is a lot of improvement we can make (in the US) now that we have lots of good products and the perceived quality values are good."
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