Nick Weidelich

I am a 2nd generation 310S (Canadian automotive service technician) licensed technician specializing in VWs and Audis. My father was trained in Germany to work on aircooled VWs before moving to Canada and starting a small VW garage. I've done everything in the automotive industry from sweep the floor there after school, to running the family business, to starting 2 other VW service garages, to being the service manager at the local VW dealership. I have a hell of a lot of wild stories. People keep telling me I should write a book or a TV show about it all but I think I could tell it better on a platform like yours. I've been a simple enthusiast, made money from VW repair and even shook hands with the CEO (at the time) of VW Canada, Pierre Boutin. I've seen just about every aspect of the VW lifestyle and have a lot to say about the inner workings and mentality of the brand as well as where the brand is heading.

I see a clear disconnect between enthusiasts, small shops, dealerships and even between dealerships and corporate. I'd be happy to elaborate more on that. From what I've seen VW currently operates the business exclusively from spreadsheets and statistics but what made the brand great is building cars from heart and soul. If VW is going to make cars people care about again, they need to ditch the "on a scale of 1 to 5..." business model. The internal VW saying (from Pierre Boutins mouth and from the official VW onboarding training video call) is that they identify themselves as "a quirky car brand with a cult following." Well quirky is out the window with the modern product, unless you mean major engine design problems. Not to mention they completely ignore their own cult following. VW of America seems to do better. At least they show up at AVF for instance. Yes I drive 16 hours to go every year. Its the only VW show I go to. Even there the survey they put out for the enthusiasts only had "on a scale of 1 to 5..." questions.

I spent my early career at my family's small VW shop. We always talked about how the dealer has all the special tools and training. When I got to the dealer I was shocked at what a shitshow it was. We had solid technicians but management was clueless. Dealing with corporate was incredibly frustrating. From sending coupons to customers before telling the dealerships what is going on to the unnecessarily complicated updating of the scan tools with unclear instructions to changing warranty procedures without telling anyone that the procedure has changed. Truly incredible. It was us vs them vs management vs the customer. Even the way the pay was structured, everyone was pinned against eachother if you wanted a decent paycheck. I finally understood the horror stories from customers that came to our family's small shop from the dealer. Other dealerships operated better. Ours was particularly bad.

Should be a pretty good start. I have a lot of small one off stories from the shops I've worked at and the dealership. Its just a lot to type.