Golf Alltrack and Sportwagen exiting U.S. market

Volkwagen of America has come to bury the Golf Alltrack and Golf Sportwagen, but to praise them as well, in case anyone still wants to buy them while they are still being made.

American consumers have made it pretty clear that these days they want SUVs and crossovers, less so station wagons, so at the end of the year Volkswagen will stop making the Golf Alltrack and Golf SportWagen for the U.S. market at its Puebla, Mexico assembly plant. That will clear up capacity at that factory so VW can make more SUVs there.

We had earlier reported that Volkswagen was discontinuing the standard Golf for the U.S. (The GTI and Golf R will survive) and would likely end sales of the Alltrack and SportWagen variants as well. Volkswagen has now confirmed the end of those two Golf variants in a press release that spends most of its words hyping the features of the models being discontinued.

No specific production plans for the Puebla facility were mentioned in the press release from VW but reference was made to three new SUVs set to arrive from the company, the upcoming five-seat Atlas Cross Sport, the ID. CROZZ electric SUV, and the as yet unnamed compact SUV expected to slot below the Tiguan for 2021. Volkswagen uses modular platforms that give it flexibility when it comes to allocating production to particular facilities.

SUVs now make up more than half of VW’s sales. Volkswagen has reported the highest year-to-year percentage sales growth of any major car brand in the American market for the first half of this year and the company attributes that success to strong sales of the Atlas and Tiguan utility vehicles.