Dealers Upset With Volkswagen As Sales Plunge

The Volkswagen diesel cheating scandal may finally have a fix for a majority of the affected vehicles in Europe, but sales of its products around the globe have taken a plunge, especially here in the U.S. In November, Volkswagen’s U.S. sales fell 25 percent, even despite the mothership giving dealers and affected customers cash to place on the hood of new Vdubs.

With the diesel crisis entering its third month now with U.S. vehicles still lacking a clear fix, and the no-sales order on its TDI vehicles still in place, Automotive News reports that many Volkswagen dealers are getting frustrated and upset with the lack of a solution.

While Volkswagen continues to try and pinpoint where it went wrong in approving such an obviously illegal device for their diesel vehicles, it’s losing executives left and right and still waiting for U.S. regulators to approve a fix for here. Meanwhile, dealerships have been left with little or no info regarding the planned fix, and car inventories are waning, especially as factory workers take a long holiday break. This has left many dealers with little saleable inventory even as the facelifted 2016 Passat arrives, sans a diesel model.

Financial incentives have also fallen by half too, giving customers less reason to consider a Volkswagen, compared to automakers that are currently scandal-free. The result is growing resentment with the dealership network and a precipitous sales drop that’s the largest Volkswagen has seen since after the Great Recession. It appears that the worst isn’t quite over for Volkswagen just yet, and it won’t be a very merry Christmas at many dealerships across the country.