Wait...that ain't a Bentley Posted 2011/03/01 @ 1:00 PM By Myles Kornblatt
Here are a few pics we received of a luxury car owner trying to take his/her VW a little further up the corporate food chain.
Former Volkswagen chief Ferdinand Piech had high hopes for the brand his grandfather built, and the VW Phaeton may be the best symbol of Piech reaching a little too far. He wanted to turn VW into a rival for Mercedes. Piech figured if Mercedes could start reaching down the market with small cars like the A-Class, then VW should be able to go up-market. Enter Volkswagen's S-Class fighter, the Phaeton.
The large luxury sedan had healthy sales in Europe when it arrived on the scene in the early 2000s, but when it reached our shores in 2004, the Phaeton fell flat. The car was praised for its engineering, but people over here were not ready to pay a base price of nearly $65,000 (today about $75k) to the same company that was trying to sell their teenage daughter a Beetle convertible.
Possibly even worse for VW was the long options list, including the W12 engine, could make the car climb past $100,000 in today's dollars. The truth was that the car was an exceptional value over here, but luxury buyers stayed away as soon as they learned the Phaeton's resale value experienced quicker depreciation than their Madoff portfolio. That's why VW canceled the car here in 2006, and also likely why this owner paid someone a few extra dollars to have Bentley badges glued onto almost any surface that could take it. Besides, this faux Bentley does have some merit to it considering the Phaeton does share a platform with the Bentley Continental line.
So we can't blame this person for not wanting to proudly fly the VW flag on this car, but we certainty won't applaud his/her badge insecurity. Instead we'll just give it a name fitting for this home-based badging: Bentley Phaeton Phantom.
(Yes, the name steals from Rolls-Royce, but that might actually make Piech, and his little mischievous smile, very happy)
