VW Phaeton Gets Another Go At U.S. By 2019

It’s been eight years since the Volkswagen Phaeton was dropped from the U.S. market, but a lot has changed in the luxury car segment since then. And it looks like VW is going to make another run at this market. In an interview with Bloomberg at the New York Auto Show, Michael Horn, VW AG’s newly appointed president and CEO of the Americas, revealed interesting new plans for VW in this region including the confirmation that the Phaeton will be re-entering the U.S. marketby the end of the decade.

Horn said that the Phaeton would make its return by 2018 or 2019, and considering the fact that the full-size luxury sedan market now includes non-traditional brands like Kia and Hyundai, VW re-entering this segment seems like a no-brainer for VW. Whenever the Phaeton does come back to the U.S., it will most certainly be an all-new car from the one that launched here in 2004. The Phaeton is still sold in Europe and is essentially the same that launched in 2002, so it would appear that a next-gen Phaeton is on the horizon. Similar to most European cars, the Phaeton would likely launch across the Atlantic before making its way to the U.S. a year or two later.

In addition to the news about the Phaeton, Horn also said that there are no plans for VW to build any more factories in North America and it doesn’t sound like there is any chance the U.S. will ever see the Amarok pickup in its current state, with Horn saying that the truck’s technology and the engineering are too expensive for the U.S. market. What we will be getting, though, is a new Passat next year follow by two new utility vehicles.

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