Another victim of SUV demand is the increasing number of SUVs.
The Volkswagen Santana will be retired after nearly four decades of success on the Chinese market. Automotive News claims that the model will be discontinued along with the Skoda Rapid and the VW Tharu. In 1983, the Santana was launched in China with a limited run of 100 cars built from CKD kits imported from Germany. Three years later, the 10,000th Santana was constructed in China. The main goal of Volkswagen and its local partner, Volkswagen, was to localize production. Nearly 90 percent of the components used in the car were made in China by 1995.
The model is currently being assembled in Yizheng, an eastern city under the control of VW and SAIC Motors. Although the factory can produce 224,400 units annually, the shift in customer preference from sedans to SUVs means that there isn’t enough demand to justify production. Although Volkswagen did not confirm the end of Santana, it admitted that sedans aren’t as popular in China. In an email statement to Reuters, the company stated that “customer preferences are gradually shifting towards notchback ICE [internal combustion engine] models towards BEV (battery-electric vehicle) and SUV models.”
As the symbol of China’s economic growth, the Santana is regarded as the brand’s most significant model in recent decades. Since its introduction in China in mid-80s, the Santana has been sold by the Wolfsburg-based automaker. It is interesting to note that the four first generations of this model were largely based upon the original Santana. This was in turn a slightly modified and redesigned version of the Volkswagen Passat B2.