Volkswagen all but made half a million worldwide sales in the first month of 2017. In all, 495,900 vehicles to handed over to customers throughout the world. However, this is a 4.9% fall compared with the previous year.

J??rgen Stackmann, Volkswagen Brand Board Member for Sales, said that the "Volkswagen brand started 2017 successfully. Worldwide deliveries may be slightly below the value for the previous year, but this is solely due to special effects in the major market of China. All the other reported gratifying increases compared with the previous year."

In Europe, deliveries rose by 4.7 per cent to 126,700 vehicles. This markets in Spain and Italy were notable for their positive sales. It was sales of the new Tiguan that was the bedrock for this improvement. In VW's home market of Germany, 38,600 vehicles were handed over to customers, corresponding to a slight fall of 5.1 per cent.

Volkswagen's cars are present in more than 150 markets throughout the world and the company produces vehicles at over 50 locations in 14 countries. Currently, 218,000 people work for Volkswagen and they have 7,700 dealerships with 74,000 employees around the world. In 2015, Volkswagen produced about 5.8 million vehicles.