Volkswagen is doing an amazing job

Volkswagen Santana

I was rather amazed when I saw the list of car sales over the month August at China Car Times. The car model I thought was fully out of grace, the Volkswagen Santana, is back at the top of the list.

In the 1990s the then very successful joint venture between Volkswagen and SAIC, the automotive industry owned by the Shanghai government, introduce this car model that had never appealed to the European car buyers. But since it was the only model the leading car manufacturer was allowed to produce and since it were mainly state-owned companies and government departments buying the car, nine out of ten cars on the streets in Shanghai were a Volkswagen Santana till the end of the 1990s.

Then SAIC started its love affair with GM, partly to punish Volkswagen for its extramarital affair with FAW up north, where it started to make the Audi. Bit by bit the Buick started to take over and actually became for a while the leading car model.

Obvious, now the market has become much more consumer driven, Volkswagen is doing something good. Not only is this strange product of the former planned economy back on top, in the rest of the top ten we find the Jetta of Volkswagen at the second position. the Octavia at five and the Passat at eight.

Time to look for somebody who can explain all this to me.

Your girl's favorite

Chery QQ

Where are the days that Chinese girls were happy with a fake Gucci bag and a pair of shoes? China Car Times comes this weekend with the top-10 girl's cars and fortunately the number one is small and affordable, the Chery QQ:

What else could be Chinese womens ultimate favorite car ever other than a homegrown domestic car that costs peanuts to buy and pennies to run? Its small, its mega cheap, its funky, its everything a chic urban chick needs to get from A to B to C to D to E to F to G, and back to A again to buy the first thing she saw in the best possible way. China Car Times has several friends who have QQ’s, both male and female, and they regard it as the Chinese ‘Peoples Car‘ - a car that anyone can afford regardless of social standing. The QQ (now demoted to mere QQ3 after its ugly bigger sister, the QQ6 appeared) is still selling well despite the QQ6 showing up on the block. The QQ will definitely go down in history as a memorial to Chinas industrial development.

But on a scary 9th place we also see the Audu A4, worth five Chery QQ. "Size must matter, after all," remarks a snarky China Car Times.

My favorite girl is driving an Audi A4, but that is fortunately paid for by her company. That makes deciding easier.

The article has no trace of a source and even does no try to explain how the listing has been done, so the scientific value - unlike that of other listings - might be low.