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The meaning of the Volkswagen logo in Germany

Volkswagen is an automobile manufacturing company headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany, and the core enterprise of the Volkswagen Group, one of the world’s four largest automobile manufacturers. In 2019, it ranked 9th in the Fortune Global 500.

Volks means “national” in German, Wagen means “car” in German, and the full name means “national car”, so it is often referred to as “VW”. Taiwan is translated as Volkswagen, Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China are translated as Volkswagen or Volkswagen, meaning “the people’s car”. The entire automobile group produced and sold more than 9.07 million vehicles in 2012, and the Volkswagen brand exceeded 5.74 million vehicles.

Brand Culture brand logo

Volkswagen (Volks Wagenwerk in German), which means the car used by the public, has undergone many changes in the history of the car’s logo. The VW in the logo is the first letter of the full name. The logo icon is made up of three “Vs” made with the middle and index fingers, indicating that Volkswagen and its products will win – win – win.

Brand group

The Group’s passenger vehicle business is divided into two major brands. Under the group, Audi and Volkswagen independently manage their brand groups and are responsible for generating profits from them. Each brand has its own logo and operates independently, with products ranging from ultra-economical compact models (with a fuel consumption rate of only 3 liters/100 km) to luxury sedans.

The Audi brand group includes four brands: Audi, Seat, Lamborghini and DUCATI.

The Volkswagen brand group includes 8 brands including Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Skoda, Bentley and Bugatti, Porsche, Scania and MAN.

Company structure

Volkswagen is a member of the Volkswagen Group, other group companies include:

1. Audi – a local German car company, bought from Daimler-Benz in 1964;

2. NSU – Bought by Volkswagen’s Audi division in 1969, the brand has not been used since 1977;

3. Seat – a Spanish car company, which became the main holder in 1987 and bought in 1990;

4. SKODA (Skoda) – Czech car company, bought in 1991;

5. Bentley – British luxury car manufacturing company, bought from Vickers company and Rolls-Royce brand at the same time in 1998, but since the registered trademark rights were transferred to BMW company, it can no longer use the Rolls-Royce brand to manufacture vehicles;

6. Bugatti – the French supercar manufacturer, bought in 1998;

7. Lamborghini – Italian supercar manufacturer, bought on June 12, 1998. From July 1998 to December 2002, the Bentley division of Volkswagen also sold vehicles under the Rolls-Royce brand under the authorization of BMW, which had bought the ownership of the brand. Since 2003, only vehicles manufactured by BMW can bear the Rolls-Royce brand.

8. Porsche: On July 24, 2008, the European Union officially decided to approve the acquisition of the German Volkswagen Group by Porsche Automobile Holding AG. If the acquisition is successful, the combined company will become the number one automotive company in Europe and the top three in the world.

However, when Porsche was on the way to acquiring Volkswagen, the funds were suddenly insufficient, and it was forced to suspend the acquisition of the Volkswagen Group. As a result, Volkswagen merged with Porsche, and Porsche, in a certain name, also became a brand under Volkswagen.

On July 5, 2012, the German Volkswagen Group announced that it has reached an agreement with Porsche to exchange 50.1% of Porsche’s equity in exchange for 4.46 billion euros (about 5.58 billion US dollars) and 1 common stock. The deal is set to close in August. At that time, Porsche’s equity will be fully owned by Volkswagen.

Honors

In December 2018, the “2018 Top 500 World Brands” compiled by the World Brand Lab was announced, ranking 39th.

In October 2019, Interbrand ranked 40 in the Top 100 Global Brands.

On November 16, 2019, the Hurun Research Institute released the “2019 Hurun Global Unicorn Active Investment Institutions Top 100 List”, and Volkswagen was on the list.

On July 22, 2019, Volkswagen ranked 27th among the 50 most profitable companies in the 2019 Fortune Global 500 with a profit of 14,322.5 (million US dollars).

In January 2020, the 2020 list of the world’s 500 most valuable brands was released, and Volkswagen ranked 25th.