Audi's Lofty Goals for 2015

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The GlobeAndMail has an excellent article that details Audi's audacious plans to become the world's largest luxury automaker by 2015. It is currently 2007 (almost 2008). What this means is that Audi will need to transform itself into a mainstream luxury player in order for that to happen.

7 years is not a lot of time, but with the right amount of drive and motivation, it can happen. But I must warn the company. Changes like this don't happen overnight. A company's reputation (good or bad) can haunt them for many years. A genuine turnaround takes a long time to truly make.

Take for instance, the Hyundai Motor company. In the 80's and 90's they were a complete joke. When they started to arguably build better cars than Toyota (TM), those feats were met with a lot of skepticism. How good will the cars be long term, people asked? These cars may be fully featured, but will it fall apart 5 years down the road, others inquired.

It's not fair to compare Audi with Hyundai, but the point I was trying to make is that Audi is an excellent brand with arguably the nicest interiors in the industry. Their cars have potent power and are very well designed. However, what puts them below the leaders is the lack of cache when compared with the leader BMW AG. There is a certain prestige or perceived prestige in driving a BMW. As a colleague once remarked - the Audi is a poor man's BMW.

To get to their goal of being top luxury automaker by 2015, Audi will have to do a few things:


  • Improve the reliability of their cars so they are tops among the German car makers

  • Offer a competing car in every class that BMW and Lexus have. Yes - this means they'll need to offer a car that competes with the Mini Cooper

  • Either include Rear wheel drive vehicles or push their Quattro AWD technology more and make it more of a standard feature in their cars



Overall I think they have a chance - but it'll be a lot of hard work to achieve the number 1 spot. As you know, I'm a big fan of competition. This challenge will no doubt allow the other car makers to innovate. I can't wait to see what the cars will be like in 2015!

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