Profits Down at Volkswagen

Despite brisk sales of the new Golf model, VW profits will be down more than fifty percent by the end of this year, according to a report in the German magazine Spiegel. VW will officially release the figures on October 29th, but a report in Spiegel magazine this week quoted a "top manager" as saying profits totalled just €2million, compared to €4.8 last year. The costs of introducing the new Golf, the weak dollar, and the crisis in Brazil, where VW runs several production sites, were all sighted as reasons for the drop. The downturn is not entirely unexpected: a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at the beginning of October quoted a company source as reporting much the same thing, though no figures were named. All the same, executives at the German carmaker are optimistic that 2004 will see things turnaround, and sales of the new Golf -- 135,000 will roll off the production line by the end of this year -- will help turn things around.