The Cupra marque began as a sub-brand of VW’s Spanish subsidiary, SEAT. Then, it was spun-off as a separate, performance-oriented brand, and over the past few years, Cupra has had far better year-over-year sales increases than any other VW marque.
The many Cupra models are currently sold in Europe, Australia, and Mexico, and VW plans to bring them to The US by 2030. The Cupra models apparently borrow from both the VW and Audi parts bins, and their pricing will be placed above that of VW, and below the pricing of Audi models.
The fact that VW is trying to price the Cupra models in between their VW offerings and Audi offerings is… sort of… reminiscent of Ford’s strategy when they decided to market the Edsel, and we all know how that turned out.
But, if the emphasis is on performance, then maybe they will be successful. I think that VW’s biggest obstacle might be their reputation for reliability that is far below that of their Japanese competitors, so maybe there will be no mention of Cupra’s VW connection, even though these vehicles will be made in VW factories.
It might work for a while. Speaking of too many divisions, GM had Pontiac as their sport division, Buick and Oldsmobile as their second tier luxury brands, Cadillac as the top tier luxury brand, and Chevrolet as the division for the less affluent. That was the general rule but not a guarantee since Corvette is a Chevy.
I think this idea of introducing new vehicle models designed to slot between higher-end VW models and Audi is the wrong move at the wrong time. And doing so with a brand new (to the U.S.) marque is just plain silly. We are heading into a recession, consumers are loaded up on debt, and affordability is a major problem.
If VW had read the tea leaves correctly, they’d be introducing new economy models here, not this.
VW is looking to the long term, and they know that there will be a different administration in power in 5 years. Hopefully, we will have recovered from our recent economic downturn by then. If we haven’t recovered, then they can shift gears and introduce their cheaper Skoda and SEAT models here.
And, let’s not forget about GM’s Geo brand, which was an odd admixture of rebadged cars from three different manufacturers. In Canada, Geo models were sold under the Asüna name. Prior to the Asüna venture, GM also had a Canadian brand by the name of Passport.
GM made a big mistake dropping GEO. They should have continued importing badge-engineered vehicles, and selling them under the GEO name. FCA should do the same thing–such as selling a rebadged Mitsubishi Mirage as a “Dodge Attitude”, maybe a rebadged Suzuki Swift as a “Dodge Shadow”, etc.
If they had been selling in adequate numbers, I imagine that GM would have kept marketing them. At some point, maybe Toyota felt that they didn’t need the co-effort with GM, but Isuzu and Suzuki needed to move as much iron through their factories as possible. I imagine that both Suzuki and Isuzu weren’t happy when GM pulled the plug on this badge engineering project.
