This was foreseeable. Americans care about payments. How many buyers think about maintainance costs four years down the road.
These extended warranties aren’t cheap. The chance of something going wrong in years five and six is much higher than in years two and three. You have to build in include significant costs per vehicle to cover the expected expenses from the warranty claims in years five and six.
Certainly a couple oil changes and a service visit will be much cheaper especially since I’d guess most people won’t take advantage of it. As long as you don’t provide loaners for oil changes unless buyers live real close to dealership or don’t value their time, they are likely to get service done at a more convenient location.
Especially on unreliable cars like VW’s.
Dealers also didn’t like the loss of extended warranty sales revenue.
Makes a lot of sense, at least for VW. I can see the repair costs just racking up after 4 years.
so this will benefit lessee’s since they are only keeping 3 years anyway. But I wont be buying a VW
They had to respond to Dieselgate and they did with the longer warranty. The new warranty is still very competitive and needs to be given VW’s above average repair costs…
At least they don’t cancel on the cars they’ve sold. That was nice of them
Helped my brother get a 2019 Jetta with barely any miles and nice discount for being used at Honda dealership.
It was a funny way to cut off their F&I guy speech on extended warranty and to let him know this car has a 6 year bumper to bumper transferable warranty. He was shocked and wasn’t aware of that.
I guess otherwise the price would have been jacked up since he could not sell that said extended warranty.
Just when they had an edge too…
That would have invited yet another class action lawsuit against VW
This was inevitable. They did this to lure people back into the family after DieselGate. They weren’t going to keep it forever.
I thought the cheap VW leases back in 2016 when I got mine were supposed to do that.
Buick also is reducing their 4 yr. warranty starting in 2020 back to 3/36
So GM is forcing you to buy a service contract then if you want the “extended” coverage. IMO, that’s a bad move by GM, especially if they want to consider Buick “Premium.” The other manufacturers are still pushing 4 year warranties on their “premium” offerings.
Always thought of Buick as mid-premium…
Yeah, they’re kind of a tweener between Chevy and Caddy. Caddy is supposed to compete with BMW/Merc/etc, but Buick still vies for a similar demo. Guess it still makes-sense in the Alfred Sloan playbook.
Has a new competitor in “Nissan-Plus”…
Though I’d argue having a lesser prestigious reputation (Infiniti, Acura, Volvo) still beats lesser prestigious and retiree/senior-citizen reputation (Buick, Lincoln - though the latter’s new SUVs are helping to change this little by little).
That warranty was a huge selling point. I remember how their longer warranty was plastered all over the walls of VW dealers a couple of months ago.
As VW leans more and more into leasing, the complimentary maintenance will move the needle more than a longer warranty. Though I don’t expect the change to help their RV (customers more motivated to move on after 3/36, also need to depreciate out the value of the maintenance).