JURGEN STACKMANN

Member of the Board of Management Volkswagen Brand for Sales, Marketing & After Sales

Q. Who are you targeting with this car?

A. The car itself has very few natural competitors in the market. So it lends itself to customers who want to express themselves, people who don’t have to make pure, rational choices. They want something very unique.

Q. Do you think competitors could join you, or is this a segment you’ll be alone in?

A. You have to make three big decisions: do you want to invest in the cabriolet segment, which is a very small segment? Do you have a base car that actually allows you to create a cabriolet? We’ve seen one example where it didn’t really work. And thirdly, can it be affordable enough so that you can sell it to a sufficient amount of people?

Q. Could you build another convertible SUV, based on a T-Cross, Tiguan or Touareg?

A. There is no plan to do this with another SUV. We don’t have an SUV cabriolet range in our head. And I don’t think people will see this as an SUV-cabriolet. I think they will look at it and see a very strong, characterful car.

Q. Do you still need to build a Golf Cabriolet now that the T-Roc Cabrio exists?

A. I don’t believe we will come to that decision. We took the decision to do the T-Roc Cabriolet as a team, and to be frank, we said to the team ‘Show us the car. If we love it, we’ll give it a shot’. We loved it. It will suit the lineup and it will be a good Volkswagen. I don’t think we need to take another cabriolet into what is a small market segment, so I don’t think Golf will get a cabriolet.

If we do go for another open car it will be something radically different, so something like the ID. Buggy. That would be something very different. Different user group, different style group, but not another cabriolet.

“I don’t think people will see this as an SUV-cabriolet. It’s a very strong, characterful car”