Volkswagen will not showcase its major brand at the Paris motor show in 2018, the recent and most prominent automaker to swerve the biennial industry gathering.
Europe’s largest automotive group has scaled back brand presentations at conventional auto shows, consisting Detroit and Frankfurt, since the Volkswagen emissions scandal emerged in 2015.
This has partly been observed as a cost-cutting measure for the automaker which has been lowering spending to counter the multi-billion dollar costs of working with the fallout of cheating diesel emissions tests, but it also shows a wider sector trend.
Jean-Claude Girot, the head of the Paris show organizers informed Reuters his department has an agreement with Volkswagen that the German brand is going to take a stand at the upcoming exhibition in 2020.
“This is a one-off decision rather than a permanent loss of interest on VW’s part,” Girot stated. “When a brand decides not to book a stand it’s usually to decrease costs.”
Many of the standard industry gatherings have registered a fall in visitor numbers since 2000, forcing automakers to rethink how they spend their marketing budgets.
“The Volkswagen brand is continually evaluating its participation in international motor shows,” it stated on Thursday, adding it could instead host a number of communications activities in the French capital, consisting of test drives.
Whether or not the automaker will return to Paris in 2020 “will be assessed in due course,” it stated.
Other brands keeping a distance from the October 2-3 Paris show consist of Ford, PSA Group’s Opel, Nissan Motor, its premium brand Infiniti, Mazda Motor Corp and Volvo Cars, according to Girot.
Volkswagen’s luxury division Audi quit its own pavilion in Frankfurt, that hosts Europe’s largest auto show in alternate years, for the first time in many years in last year.
