German Engineers Fail the Paternity Test

[DainBramaged]

IN the ad campaign that introduced the Volkswagen Routan, the actress Brooke Shields worries that women are getting pregnant just so they can experience German engineering in the form of a minivan. Putting aside the mild hilarity of that premise — akin, perhaps, to saying that people are committing seppuku so they can buy those cool Japanese ceramic knives — it isn’t even true.

The 2009 Routan isn’t engineered by Germans, unless you count the ones who used to work for DaimlerChrysler. It is merely a rebadged, slightly rebodied, mildly retuned Chrysler minivan.

Volkswagen changed only the exterior lights, rear glass, front grille, select parts of the interior and some settings for the suspension and steering. And yet, as if to obscure further the Routan’s provenance, VW exhorts Web users to “have a virtual baby for German engineering” at a dedicated minisite: vw.com/vwhype/babymaker/en/us/.

Yikes!

Tone-deafness is the Routan’s defining characteristic, and only the accounting department seems not to care: Volkswagen of America wanted its own version of the best-selling Chrysler van to protect itself from currency fluctuations — the Routan rolls out of Chrysler’s minivan plant in Windsor, Ontario — and to have a three-row vehicle to offer its aging, child-bearing constituency. If VW is to have any hope of reaching its goal of 800,000 American sales a year by 2018, it needs a big family hauler. The Routan, the thinking goes, gives VW the benefits without the sacrifice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/automobiles/autoreviews/25routan.html