Volkswagen's Autostadt: Image Is Everything

As the Chattanooga City Council decides to spend millions of dollars to help Volkswagen build a visitor's center along I-75, we travel to the auto maker's flagship visitor center at company headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany.

Once there, Otto Ferdinand Wachs greets me and photographer Brent McDonald with a handshake and tells us "let's say welcome to the family of Volkwagen."

Wachs is the CEO of Volkswagen Group's Autostadt, or car city in English. Wachs said building the Autostadt is one of the Volkswagen Group's most important moves ever in marketing and sales.

Designed by architect Gunter Henn, completed in 2000 and spanning 62 acres, Autostadt is a theme park showcasing the history of automobility, the Volkswagen brands and architecture that bridges the old and new.

Tours are given in 16 languages to more than 17-million visitors since opening it's doors the same year the Wold Expo was held in nearby Hanover. During weekdays there will be almost 6,000 visitors - that number swells to 20,000 on the weekend.

Once inside the Kunden Center on campus we find Juan Blazevic and his wife keeping their eyes glued to a large display board showing appointment times with a customer service representative. They traveled from der Bodensee, a lake along the German-Swiss border, to pick up the vehicle they ordered from a VW dealership in southern Germany.

Blazevic tells us, in German, that he ordered a Tiguan SUV which is now Volkswagen's hottest selling vehicle in Europe. In fact people like the Blazevic's have to wait six to eight months to get one.

Autostadt is where one-third of all German VW buyers come to pick up their vehicles made at the company's main plant in Wolfsburg, which is right next door. Buyers get a discount from dealers by coming to Wolfsburg. The trip they make is a proud voyage for loyal VW owners, who stay at the company-owned Ritz-Carlton hotel and sight-see around the city that was literally built to make the cars now known as Volkwagens.

Brand new VW's are waiting inside spaces stacked in two, round glass and steel towers each holding up to 400 vehicles. The towers are 20-stories tall and feature a unique lift system in the middle that carries vehicles and visitors to the top. The views from inside the glass towers give 360-degree panoramas of the entire city.  

Customers and visitors are treated to a tour that inspires all senses. White and blue lighting, as seen in a brilliant Scirocco display, reflects the company's colors. Volkswagen uses art and emotion to convey their core values - quality, safety, social responsibility and environmental awareness - through modern architecture that features galvanized steel and glass construction.

Inside the main entrance to the GroupForum and Piazza a huge globe made of steel hangs over a large, square mirrored floor. From there visitors will find a restaurant and play area to leave their children.

While the design of the Autostadt has a distinct German flavor Wachs said architect Gunter Henn and his team visited several major theme parks in the United States.

"We learned very much from your country because you are a country of entertainment and education," Wachs said.

In the museum section of Autostadt you will find pristine examples of the cars than made automotive history. Like the first car ever made - an 1886 Benz Motorwagen. Next to it the first American assembly-line produced car, the Ford Model-T. And of course the first cars produced in the early 1930's and designed by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, the KdF wagen which became known as The Beetle.

Several floors feature cars that made history through the 20th century, including brands like Lamborghini that are now part of the Volkswagen Group. A yellow Lamborghini from 1967 is displayed with a sentence that made headlines in papers from around the world when it was released: "The Hottest Thing From Italy Since Sohpia Loren." 

The entire Autostadt experience keeps people like the Blazevic's very loyal customers.

"Yes, we have always bought Volkswagens, " Blazevic said.

While the Chattanooga Volkswagen visitor center on I-75 won't be as massive as Autostadt we can certainly see how much Volkswagen puts into their image. And if the company sticks with design and artistic concepts used in Wolfsburg we could possibly see the U.S. center featuring steel and glass construction with blue accent lighting inside.

The rest of this week and into next week we'll have more stories that take a closer look at the Volkwagen Group as a business and innovator of future car technologies, and of course the city where it all started in 1938.