Volkswagen Isn't Selling Any Brands Just Yet, But It's Still Their 'Plan B'

I did a double take at your post, as it took me a while to realize by "Daimler" you mean Daimler-Benz. Jaguar bought the Daimler Car Company in 1960, and still owns the rights to the name. Daimler is the oldest British car maker, founded in 1896. Unfortunately, they have not made a Daimler badged car since 2009.

Daimler....Mercedes Benz could merge with VW, making it by far the largest Automotive business on the planet. Daimler has vast reserves of money, VW still has a lot of money.Truck, Commercial and car resources would be enormous

Porsche is their most profitable brand and the namesake brand of the company's founder. They aren't selling that unless they are in massively dire straits. Even Bentley doesn't really make sense to sell, since they've integrated a lot of development with Porsche now and they have a license to print money with the new Bentayga (they've already sold at least a year's worth of production @ $300k apiece). The next Panamera and Continental/Flying Spur are sharing the MSB platform. If they have to sell a brand, the first to go would be things like Ducati and Lamborghini. If those didn't bring enough money, maybe Seat goes next or Scania or MAN trucks.

@derekson Scania and MAN are very profitable and have Global connections everywhere except NA. Before the GFC both Truck brands were producing more class 8 Tractors than all of NA and that includes Mexico. Scania is the most profitable Truck maker Globally

@RobertRyan TO be clear: I don't expect them to sell any brands. But I could see themselves divesting of truck businesses before they'd drop brands that share development costs with other brands they'd never sell.

Some of those brands are crazy profitable, but what VW needs is on a whole other level. Their US exposure is small potatoes, compared to globally.

@DenverMike Other countries don't have the same kind of tort law or penalties like the EPA fines that the US has though.

@derekson What about the 'defective' TDIs themselves? Only 5% or so, went to the US.

@DenverMike The standards they need to meet when fixed are far less stringent than the US regs, making them much easier to fix. And without US tort law, there's almost no leverage to force them into buybacks in the ROW markets.

@DenverMike US response and action, is all the leverage needed. What kind of message would VW send their bread-n-butter markets, treating them like 2nd class hogs, getting fed leftover scraps.

@DenverMike Why not just abandon US market altogether and do not pay a dime?

@DenverMike VW may still do that, makes too much sense not to abandon the US. If they stay, it's for Mexico and Mexico alone. 'That' I know they're not abandoning!!