MARCH 25, 2003

Volkswagen announces second best results in history

The Volkswagen Group has just announced its second best results in the history of the company, with a profit in 2002 of more than $4.2bn. This compares to $4.71bn in 2001. The company's sales were up to $93bn compared to $94.72 in 2001. In total the company's production dropped by nearly 100,000 to 4.984m vehicles and despite the difficult economic climate VW remained Europe's biggest car manufacturer.

The VW brand remains the big cash generator with a profit of $2.67bn while Audi produced $1.5bn. It is worth noting that the biggest growth for Volkswagen was in Asia. The most disappointing region was South America where sales dropped. With such figures it makes increasing sense for the German firm to look to Formula 1 which has been used by rival firms in recent years to build up market share in the developing markets.

There have been rumours for years that VW is looking at an F1 programme but to date these have all been denied.