Volkswagen are Europe's biggest manufacturer with a lineup that includes the Audi, Seat and Skoda marques. With a range that covers every sector of the market they're a good indicator of the state of the European car industry. VW's flagship car is the Phaeton, designed to the exacting specifications of their chairman Ferdinand Piech.
It's not known if carbon emissions were part of the brief, but if so it looks like the designers missed the memo; VWs vision of driving perfection pumps out up to 348g CO2 per km, even more than their Touareg SUV.
Yet when VW try it's clear they can do better. They've created a green label to support each of their marques - for Audi that's 'e' models, for VW it's 'Blue Motion' and for Skoda it's 'Greenline'. These cars show that VW can do better when they try. A shame then that they can't stop themselves from pepping up their line with sports models that put out 50% more CO2 than other cars in the same range.
2006 European Performance Sales weighted CO2 average : 166g Share in carbon cake : 21.31% Share in vehicle sales : 20.49% - 2 940 000