Rabbit fans, you are too few. At least, that's how Volkswagen is feeling these days according to Automotive News.
The redesigned Golf which is already on sale in Europe, will come to America under the same name this fall, a reversal of the reversal instituted just a few years ago. No particular reason was given other than the fact that the U.S. was the only market that didn't use Golf.
More importantly, the Golf will offer Volkswagen's excellent 50-state legal, 2.0-liter diesel four-cylinder engine that's currently offered in the Jetta TDI. Golf TDI, yep that sounds pretty good.
bankerdanny says:
04:20 PM, 03/25/09
The switch from Rabbit to Golf was foolish at the time as VW sqandered all the brand recognition they had accumulated selling over 1,000,000 Rabbits in the US.
Switching back to Rabbit FROM Golf did the same thing, the Rabbit was largely forgotten by the age group that the Golf appeals to, so I'm not sure what they hoped to accomplish by abondoning the now well known Golf nameplate. It's not like Rabbit was an iconoc name ala the Beetle, Camaro, and (to a lesser extent) Challenger.
At least this time they didn't wait until people had forgotten the Golf name.
roar02ram says:
05:14 PM, 03/25/09
One of those two decisions was dumb.
bankerdanny says:
06:38 PM, 03/25/09
Well, really it's 3 decisions
1. Rabbit becomes Golf
2. Golf goes back to Rabbit
3. Nevermind, Rabbit again becomes Golf
I vote for decision 1 being the most foolish.
cwc1 says:
07:00 PM, 03/25/09
LOL, a reversal of the reversal. Resurrecting the Rabbit name after 20+ years never did make much sense.
bc1960 says:
07:52 PM, 03/25/09
Pease, God, let the Golf TDI be available with nice cloth upholstery like the other Golfs and Jetta S instead of the ghastly vinyl in the Jetta TDI.
cruiserhead1 says:
08:35 PM, 03/25/09
Hopefully VW keeps the price competitive. Golf looks nice enough.
They need to get rid of the Toureg, CC,and Routan.
They need to make the Jetta look good.
bring the Polo here,
redesign the Beetle,
bring the Microbus,
design some interesting small and midsize cars with some personality. VW has such a rich history with economic cars yet seem to ignore it and more interested in copying Corollas.
Focus on making VW's... you know, affordable german engineering.
Instead of competing with Honda, VW decided it's better to compete with Audi.
Remove head from the southern orifice VW.
dougtheeng says:
06:19 AM, 03/26/09
"No particular reason was given other than the fact that the U.S. was the only market that didn't use Golf. "
US and CANADA. I prefer the name Golf, fwiw.
bankerdanny says:
08:02 AM, 03/26/09
This is the same line of reasoning that prompted the change to Golf in the 80's. The difference is that back then the Rabbit was a well known and popular car. Today I think most people see Rabbit and think "Oh yea, that used to be the Golf."
I don't know why the bothereed to change it back to Rabbit. It's not like Golf = Edsel. The name had no negative connotations. It was the VW part, with it's overall rep of so-so reliability that caused any problems.
Cruiserhead, i always thought VW was trying to position themselves as Audi for the middle class, something I think they accomplished. The Phaeton was a foolish attempt to push into high end markets where VW doesn't have a good enough rep tp compete.
I would keep all the models you mention except the Routan, which I think is much better looking than the Dodge it is based on, but I would still replace it with the brilliant Microbus that they were showing a couple years ago. VW really (pardon the pun) missed the bus when they dropped that program.