Dieselgate? What Dieselgate? VW sales SOAR to all time record in January

The Dieselgate fallout for the Volkswagen Group seems to have had no long-term effect on sales, with the VW Group posting all time record sales for January 2018.

The Volkswagen Group looked to be in danger of extinction two years ago when the world work up to find VW had been scamming emissions on their cars by fitting defeat devices to deliver reduced emission readings in official tests.

The Dieselgate scandal engulfed the whole VW Group – VW, SEAT, Skoda, Audi, Porsche – and it’s already cost VW more than £20 billion so far – and there’s more to come.

But VW is defying all the odds to not only survive Dieselgate, but to thrive and prosper in its wake as it goes on an SUV and fluffy bunny offensive, delivering more new SUVs and promising to deliver a whole raft of new EVs and Hybrids and electrified versions of all its models.

All that, and a PR offensive which seems to deliver more press releases every day than almost all other car makers put together, is paying dividends, with the VW Group posting all time record January sales of 898,700 new cars sold.

China plays a big part in that with sales of 398,600, but even mature markets like Europe and the US – the markets most hit by Dieselgate – posting increases of 5.5 and 6.7 per cent respectively.

VW cars posted increases of 7.1 per cent, but it was Audi and SEAT with the biggest jumps (20.3 and 20.4 per cent respectively), and although VW Commercial vehicles sales actually fell by 1.4 per cent, those of MAN and Scania jumped by 30 per cent.

All of which is really very impressive.