Volkswagen plays nice; Wants to reach out to Suzuki!

Days ago, Japanese automaker Suzuki turned around and bit Volkswagen right back by delivering an ultimatum to German automaker Volkswagen, to either give access to all the technology originally agreed upon in the Volkswagen-Suzuki alliance or quit the alliance and sell back the stake to Suzuki. Suzuki alleged breach of contract when it served the ultimatum and here’s how Volkswagen is responding to Suzuki’s aggressive posturing.

Volkswagen-Suzuki Alliance

Volkswagen is a big behemoth controlling a multitude of global brands compared to tiny Suzuki, whose bread and butter market is the Indian small car market, where it holds over 50% market share, along with Maruti, its Indian partner. One of Volkswagen’s key executive, Hans Demant, who is in charge of the VW-Suzuki alliance at Volkswagen has had this to say to a German magazine.

We are prepared to reach out to Suzuki. Returning our 20 percent stake is out of the question for VW. Suzuki and Volkswagen have complementary technological approaches. But there is still industrial logic(to the partnership).

So, Volkswagen AG is clearly not giving up its 20% stake in Suzuki any time too soon as the statement made by Hans Demant clearly indicates. On the contrary, Volkswagen still thinks that the alliance with Suzuki is workable and something positive can actually come out of it.

As we had reported earlier, though Volkswagen seems to have belittled Suzuki by not according an equal partner status to the latter, these latest moves by Volkswagen seem to indicate that the German automaker is more interested to hold on to the partnership as it could give it a hold in one of the world’s fastest growing car markets in the world, India.

Suzuki, on the other hand seems quite happy to use diesel engine technology from Italian automaker Fiat. Whatever may be the case, we still haven’t heard the last of this issue even as Suzuki clearly doesn’t seem to want to have anything to do with Volkswagen.

Via WheelsUnplugged

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