Regarding Peter Campbell’s terrific Inside Business piece “A survivalist mentality has helped Stellantis eclipse Volkswagen” (March 13), I remember our first VW Beetle. It was purchased in 1951 — I was four. The car had been assembled in a small warehouse on Shelbourne Road, Dublin 4. While our neighbours in Dublin’s new postwar housing estate were bump-starting, often not successfully, or looking forlornly under the bonnet of their English cars, we drove serenely to school and then my father would go on to his work.
Serenely is probably an exaggeration; a four-cylinder 1950 aircooled car is hardly serene. But the reliability was legendary. Over the next 70 years we, my parents, and later my family have always had some sort of a VW, as a first or second car. Beetle, Passat, Scirocco, Golf, Seat and Touran. There has not been a break in the history, always a VW at the house. That will now change.
Over those two generations of ownership the one certainty was the cars’ unquestionable reliability. This unrelenting search for reliability paid handsome dividends to VW in terms of market share and profit margin. Our most recent purchase of a VW has been a disappointment, and has forced me to look at international surveys of reliability. Unfortunately, reliability is no longer a given. In some surveys of reliability, VW now scores in the lowest quartile in terms of reliability.
So whatever the culture of VW as described by Campbell, it must get its engineering right. It can make mistakes in its strategy in terms of EV, hybrid, ICE, but the market will never forgive poor engineering.
I should admit that I also drive a
50-year-old 911 Porsche, which is perfect. It starts and stops and still goes at hair-raising speeds. Utterly sublime. The gentlemen in Wolfsburg should take a lesson from their fathers.
Brían MacManus
Dublin, Ireland
