For the German coachbuilder, the future looks rather gloomy. After the end of the Chrysler Crossfire last year and the planned termination of the Audi A4 at the end of the year and the Mercedes-Benz CLK convertible next year, Volkswagen has decided to keep in-house the production of the next Golf convertible.
This news is a major blow for Karmann which has built 675,000 Golf convertibles since its first launch in 1979. Fortunately, the company will still build the BMW 1-Series convertible until 2013. However, current production capacities need to be used. Karmann isn’t the only coachbuilder that struggles to find replacement business. Heuliez, Bertone and Pininfarina have a tough time since the carmaker have decided to build niche vehicles in their own hands.
One opportunity for the coachbuilders might be to provide their production site to Indian and Chinese carmakers which have to buy expertise in order to compete with the Western major players.
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