VW is the world’s biggest automaker, despite Dieselgate

The Volkswagen Group has become the world’s top-selling car company for 2016, despite making headlines for all the wrong reasons – chiefly its dieselgate emissions cheating scandal.

VW has reported global annual sales of 10.31 million vehicles for 2016, overtaking Toyota’s annual total of 10.17 million, ending the Japanese company’s global sales hegemony of recent years.

A spokesman for VW said: "2016 was a very challenging year for us." The company "made strides in resolving and overcoming the diesel crisis" and initiated fundamental change in the company's long-term strategy, he said.
"Nonetheless, we managed to stabilise operating business in difficult conditions: the fact that we handed over more than 10 million vehicles to customers last year bolsters the group and its brands as we head for the future," he added.

General Motors (GM) will release its annual global vehicle sales numbers next week, but is unlikely to eclipse the VW Group’s numbers. It held the number one title in 2011 after Toyota's production was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami in north-eastern Japan.

The title of world’s most popular car maker, 2016, comes in spite of more than 11 million of the Volkswagen Group’s vehicles sold over the past few years being affected by dieselgate-related issues, where vehicles were fitted with ‘defeat devices’ designed to scam laboratory testing.

VW has taken provisions of €17bn so far to account for the cost of the scandal, and agreed to pay more than $10bn in compensation to almost 600,000 US motorists who cars were affected.

Lawsuits against the company over the emissions cheating scandal continue to grow globally and former Volkswagen Group chairman and CEO  Martin Winterkorn has now been implicated, as German prosecutors reveal evidence suggesting he knew about the issue.

Toyota has held the title of world’s best-selling car maker for the last four years, but Volkswagen’s new-car sales growth of 3.8 per cent was enough to trump Toyota’s meagre 0.2 per cent. Volkswagen, which makes the Audi, Porsche and Skoda brands, saw a 3.8% increase in sales buoyed by demand in China.