Commercial
For the Volkswagen dealership network, their staff trained over many years to promote and service rear-engined air-cooled cars, the appearance at relatively short notice of the water-cooled front-engined K70 presented a challenge. Although the car was priced below the Audi 100, there was an unavoidable overlap in the market place with the Volkswagen 411. Despite the different badging, some potential buyers may have tarred the K70 with the same brush as its unreliable NSU Ro 80 sister car, leading to poor sales. The car also gained a reputation for rampant body corrosion from which it never recovered.
The K70 was replaced in 1973 by the Audi-based Volkswagen Passat, although it continued in production until February 1975, by which time Volkswagen had produced 210,082 K70s before the car was withdrawn. An alternative source gives the production total of the K70 as 211,127. The K70 ended up being the only car ever to be produced at Salzgitter, the plant being turned over for engine and transmission manufacture for the entire Volkswagen Group, which continues to the present day.
Read more about this topic: Volkswagen K70
Famous quotes containing the word commercial:
“I do seriously believe that if we can measure among the States the benefits resulting from the preservation of the Union, the rebellious States have the larger share. It destroyed an institution that was their destruction. It opened the way for a commercial life that, if they will only embrace it and face the light, means to them a development that shall rival the best attainments of the greatest of our States.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.”
—Katharine Whitehorn (b. 1926)
“It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)