The Volkswagen Phaeton is Pointless. Really.

Recently a volcano situated in Iceland whose name none of us can pronounce properly caused a whole lot of hardship throughout the world. Flights were cancelled throughout Europe and if you were either planning to leave or head towards United Kingdom, you were not able to do so. Even the F1 circus was stuck in China after the recent Gran Prix. Of course, the airports opened up again and things are now back to normal. After a few hundred million dollars worth of losses that is.

This unpronounceable volcano has basically reminded us that nature is an uncontrollable force and that we are still bound by it. In fact, every legal system in the world agrees with this fact and we have escape clauses in contracts stating that if an Act of God occurs, like flood, earthquake, famine or any other natural catastrophe, the contract may be put on hold or declared null and void. So  if you think you're stuck in a one sided agreement, it may be wise to head to the nearest house of worship and pray for something to happen.

This brings me to the Volkswagen Phaeton (the newly facelifted version shown above). We all know that due to a lapse in logic or delusions of grandeur, the then chairman of the Volkswagen Group decided that it would be wise for Volkswagen to produce a car that would become the benchmark luxury saloon that would surpass market leaders like the Mercedes S-Class and the BMW 7 Series. The Phaeton was also conceived as an image booster to elevate the Volkswagen brand name.

The Phaeton had very impressive design parameters that were met and basically shared the same chassis platform as the Bentley Continental GT and the Continental Flying Spur as well as having most of its transmission and engines shared with some Audi A8 models. This made the Phaeton a Volkswagen that is very advanced, ultra reliable, luxurious and supposedly prestigious. It needed to be just that if it wanted to run with the big boys of the luxury car market; namely Mercedes and BMW.

However the problem with the Phaeton is the fact that it is a Volkswagen. I'll get to that shortly. Volkswagen stated that the Phaeton plant could produce 20,000 units annually but by September 2006, a total of only 25,000 units had been built, with production running at approximately 6,000 cars annually till 2009. This figure is paltry as Mercedes, Audi and BMW chalk up more than double the amount of luxury cars per year.

Since its launch in 2002, I have only seen one unit of this car here in the whole of South East Asia and that could have been the only one sold. The car was a Singapore registered car and the Singaporean who bought the Phaeton must have wanted to be invisible that when he bought it, he passed over the Audi, Mercedes, BMW and even the Lexus showroom to buy a Phaeton. In fact, in the U.S of A, Volkswagen only sold 820 Phaetons in 2005, which led to its withdrawal from the U.S market to this day. Regardless of what their future plans were Volkswagen intends to have a model in each market segment, I predict that it will tank if they start selling it over there again. Big time.

Volkswagen, the automotive group, has a hierarchy system. It had always been in this order; Skoda, Seat, Volkswagen, Audi, Bentley. I've left out Lamborghini as they do not make saloons. Volkswagen if you notice is one step below Audi in this hierarchy. If you sat in a Volkswagen Golf and then a similar sized Audi A3, the A3 has better materials inside and its build quality is better. This can also be clearly seen in the Phaeton when compared to the similar sized Audi A8.

It is as though the designers at Volkswagen were deliberately held back putting bold design touches on the Volkswagen to slightly differentiate both models or to put emphasis that the Audi pictured above is the premium model in the Volkswagen Group. The lines on the Audi, while understated, still manages to overwhelm the Phaeton in all aspects. Compare the facelifted Phaeton with the new Audi A8. Both are somewhat similar, but somehow you can tell more effort went to the design of the Audi. How can you hold back on a car that is supposed to be the flagship of a brand if you want it to sell in the first place? Look what happened when Volkswagen didn't hold back. They made the Bugatti Veyron, and it was biblical.

Furthermore, ‘Volkswagen’ means People's Car in German. So buying the "People’s Car" doesn’t swing it for most captains of the industries. They'd prefer plonking down sixty thousand dollars on something that is already well known for its heritage, luxury and prestige. And not one meant for mere peasants. This is regardless to the fact that such a car may attract undue and unwarranted attention to themselves. In fact, if they were so concerned about keeping a low profile, they would buy this other Volkswagen group vehicle. The Audi A8.

An A8 does not have any three pointed star protruding on top of the grill. An A8 does not have that humongous huge nostrils like the BMW 7series. An A8 does not do Italian machismo like a Maserati Quattroporte. If it were such an ostentatious car, we wouldn't see the car being the first choice for Robert De Niro and posse to use when trying to hijack some briefcase in the film, Ronin. So the A8 is already an understated luxury car. Why have two of the same kind of car then?

And then there's the Bentley Continental Flying Spur (pictured above). It uses most of the specification parameters of the Phaeton to great success as it sells well almost everywhere. English footballers as well as all those rap music artists practically buy most of the Continental's annual production and Bentley is rolling in dough because of this. The Wayne Rooneys, the Beckhams and the Jay Zs of the world all look forward to owning any recently launched Bentley but they may not even know that the Phaeton exists. Maybe that's a good thing after all. Or not.

Thus this shows that the Phaeton is second fiddle compared to the A8. So if you really, really, really, really want a luxury Volkswagen that’s Batman and not Robin the Boy Wonder, buy an Audi or even a Bentley Continental. That's what having all those other brands in the group. Volkswagen does not need to have a luxury model as they can leave that to Audi, Bentley or now even a Porsche Panamera, as Porsche is now officially part of the Volkswagen Group.

The three Volkswagen Group brands mentioned above show that the actual problem with the Phaeton is that it does not even need to challenge an outsider for sales. It has to challenge better badged in-house best sellers. Why Volkswagen continues to do so is sometimes beyond normal logic. A good car it is, but it is rather pointless too. If not for all those really rubbish Made in China copy cat cars produced over the past decade, I would have awarded the Phaeton “The most pointless car of the last decade”.

Anyway I have to say that the reality of the luxury car market is the fact that luxury car customers are quite a conservative bunch and they are usually the last to embrace new brands (this fact was mentioned by GM's ex-head honcho Rick Wagoner on Cadillac's slow progress in Europe). Take a look at Maybach. Sales are so low that Mercedes has refused to develop a totally new replacement and the facelifted 2010 Maybachs is still the same car that was launched way back in 2002. Take another look over at Cadillac. They have been trying to penetrate the European luxury car market with little or no success.

Yes. Luxury car customers are sometimes shallow and fail to see past a badge. They are smart, intelligent and extremely powerful people but it is almost impossible to change their mindset. Maybe that is why they're so successful in the first place. They would prefer a Mercedes Benz, an Audi, a BMW or something higher up like the Rolls Royce or the Bentley. Their 'shallowness' tells them that heritage and road presence is why they buy the brands above and not just lots of dead cow or wood plastered throughout the interior of a car.

In fact, if you had the choice of buying a People's Car with leather seats and lots of wood over a version of a car with the same the same amount of dead cow and wood BUT with a winged 'B' situated on top of the grill or one with four rings plastered on the grill, what car would you buy? Owning a Bentley is owning part of an institution, a heritage and owning an Audi is, well, much better than owning a Volkswagen.

Why bother challenging forces of nature, in this case market demand? Like that unpronounceable volcano in Iceland, no one is going to put a lid on that exploding volcano as its virtually impossible to do so. So Volkswagen should swallow its pride and give the Phaeton the boot. This is because no matter how fantastic it actually is no one really wants to buy a stupendously luxurious Volkswagen. Consider it as a failed experiment. Amputate the loss making limb before the gangrene spreads.