Volkswagen Motorcycle?
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Back on December 15th we wrote about Volkswagen purchasing a stake in Suzuki (see article here) and speculated at the time if that may mean the car giant entering the motorcycle world.
Volkswagen pretty much already have the car market covered given that they own Audi, Betley, Bugatti, Porsche and Skoda to name a few.
The head of VW, 71 year old Ferdeinand Piech, is said to be very keen on superbikes claiming just last year that he rides a Ducati with 180bhp and more power-per-kilo than the 1,001bhp Bugatti Veyron. Volkswagens CEO Martin Winterkom is also said to be a keen motorcyclist.
Superbike magazine recently caught up with design Nils Poschwatta, whos used to work with VW until recently and is a motorcycle fan himself. Whilst at VW he created a few concept bike sketches, and had this to say on the matter.
‘VW’s history is closely tied to Auto Union [which later became Audi], which was made up of four brands, including DKW and Wanderer, both of which used to make motorcycles. So, from a historical point of view, there is already a connection between Volkswagen and motorcycles,’ says Poschwatta.
‘But creating a car and a motorcycle is completely different. It’s very hard to create the same feeling, hard to create a family. It makes more sense to have a stand alone motorcycle brand, but to keep it clean, like VW cars, and not like Japanese bikes, which tends to be very cluttered,’ he adds.
We here at Stay On The Black towers can’t really see VW getting involved in bikes themselves, they’re more likely to purchase more of Suzuki and take off that way. Of course, another possibility is for them to go down the ‘eco’ motorcycle route. Time will tell.
