At Wolfsburg, Germany, the German auto giant group Volkswagen has a special display of one of its iconic car brands Lamborghini. Inside an exclusive pavilion, created only for this car, a bright yellow Lamborghini moves and swings at a high speed, amidst high decibel stereo sound effect, smoke screen and laser beams, creating an optical illusion to the visitors that the car is flying. But the gain is real for the Volkswagen group, which sold 6.31 million cars worldwide in 2009 for a sales revenue of €105.19 billion (Rs 630,000 crore), as many of the spellbound car-loving visitors turn into its customers.
The ‘Flying Lamborghini,’ however, is only one of the hundreds of attractions at Volkswagen’s Auotostadt (Car City in English), a theme park on automobility created 10 years ago on 62 acres near the company’s headquarter and main car factory at Wolfsburg. Through the stated motto of ‘People, cars and what moves them,’ Autostadt inculcates the culture of automobiles in the minds of Germans and visitors from other countries.
Creating values
At Autostadt the visitors begin their adventure tour under trained guides. They are first told about the group’s values: quality, safety, social responsibility and environmental awareness. They then go through a speedy virtual journey in a simulator and exciting film sequences in three different cinemas to the rational level in the Car-Design Studio, where a milling machine creates the latest Volkswagen model before visitors’ eyes.
In the park the all major Volkswagen group brands are presented in seven individual pavilions spread out in a green landscaped park. The Volkswagen group is currently developing and manufacturing vehicles for eight umbrella brands: ranging from the VW Fox, the Lamborghini sports car, the reasonably-priced compact Seat or Skoda models, the large Audi A8 Quattro and the company’s best-selling VW Golf. It also displays the highly traditional luxury Bentley and Bugatti saloon. It proudly displays a limited edition, silver chrome finish Bugatti boasting a price tag of €1.9 million. Volkswagen made only 400 such cars which have a 8000 cc engine (8 litre) and a top speed of 400 km an hour.
The park includes two massive 22-storied car towers, each with a capacity to hold 400 cars ready for delivery. Cars to the towers come directly from the factory through an underground, computer controlled, conveyer tunnel. Autostadt also has a four-storied car museum where one can take a journey in time travel starting from the inception of cars to the present day. The museum exhibits not only aspects of automobiles that have become legendary, but also delineates important technological milestones set by world’s automobile producers, both past and present.
Catch them young
Volkswagen also believes that to create brand loyalty among its customers it should also attract kids and youths who will be its future car buyers. Kids aged between 10 and 15 can obtain a driving licences if they qualify in the driving test using car simulators.
Though these are not the real driving licences for roads, using them kids can drive small battery-operated cars in a driving track simulated with traffic lights. For the grown up drivers Autostadt offers Economy Training and Safety Training that help them learn how to get the best mileage and save fuel by altering their driving methods and how to control a skid on a specially developed skid-pad. To compliment this is the all-terrain track where visitors can test drive the Volkswagen’s SUV ‘Touareg’ over 11 different obstacles.
Strategic investment
To create Autostadt Volkswagen has spent €430 million or Rs 2,600 crore, an amount one needs to invest in a country like India to set up a full fledged green-field car plant. If the car maker has spent such a huge amount of money on a theme car park, be sure it is also extracting a reasonable return. Firstly, Autostadt has become a place of tourist attraction not only for Germans but for all Europeans who love cars. In the last ten years the park, it is celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2010, has attracted 20 million visitors who also paid an entry fee that presently averages around €5 per person. “With the Autostadt, we have entered a new world,” said Autostadt GmbH CEO Otto Ferdinand Wachs who considered this major project to be one of the most important marketing and sales moves by Volkswagen.
Boosting sales
As the theme car park has become popular, car buyers also thronged Autostad to buy any Volkswagen cars directly from the company. At the Customer Centre at Autostadt, Volkswagen delivers 550 cars to buyers every day or about 160,000 cars in a year, making it the largest car distribution centre in the world from a single location. Since its inception, the company has handed over 1.4 million cars to customers at Autostadt, which is approximately 30 per cent of the German private customer market.
The Autostadt therefore plays a vital part in nurturing customer loyalty and is instrumental in fostering a direct, emotional relationship as it pertains to the brand and the company. Volkswagen claimed that approximately 20 per cent of Autostadt visitors intended buying a new vehicle in the foreseeable future.