????每三個月，大眾汽車集團（Volkswagen Group）總部的一支高管團隊就會登上飛機，從德國北部的沃爾夫斯堡飛往東南方向1000英里外靠近巴塞羅納的一個秘密地點，在地中海的粼粼波光中審查新的車型申請。雖然西班牙的氣候非常宜人，不過沒人把這些會議當(dāng)成旅行休養(yǎng)。帶隊的是大眾CEO馬丁?文德恩，他是個很苛刻的工程師。要做的工作有很多。大眾旗下共有10個轎車和卡車品牌，245款不同的車型。其中有在西班牙生產(chǎn)的低端品牌SEATs，高端的奧迪（Audi）等品牌，MAN品牌下的卡車和巴士，還有售價高達240萬美元的高端品牌布加迪威龍（Bugatti Veyron）。每一臺乘用車都要經(jīng)過嚴格的檢查。大眾并不經(jīng)常變換自己的車型，所以更要確保每款車型都是全優(yōu)之選。別忘了，這家公司生產(chǎn)的甲殼蟲（Beetle）轎車已經(jīng)有65年的歷史了。雖然大眾對新車型的審查很嚴格，但還是不能確保萬無一失。比如今年3月大眾的子品牌賓利（Bentley）在日內(nèi)瓦車展（the Geneva Motor Show）上展出了一款SUV概念車。一位網(wǎng)友在博客里稱，它看起來就像“一個窮人概念里的富人車。”一位大眾的高管也承認：“我們銷售的車型太多了，難免有一些不明智的決策。”

????今年秋天的巴黎車展（the Paris Motor Show）上，大眾將展出第七代高爾夫（Golf）掀背車，標志著高爾夫這棵車壇長青樹又將在設(shè)計上翻開新的一章。據(jù)說2013版高爾夫本質(zhì)上很像1974年版的高爾夫掀背車，不過它在設(shè)計和技術(shù)上都有大量創(chuàng)新，足以使它保住歐洲最暢銷車型的地位。很少有其它的汽車廠商可以做到這種地步，不過大眾的表現(xiàn)卻一直十分優(yōu)秀。它長期以來一直是西歐最主要的汽車廠商，而且現(xiàn)在也是中國和南美洲銷量第一的廠商，同時在美國也正在迅速崛起。2012年，大眾在美國的銷量比去年上漲了30%。從全球看來，去年大眾的銷量比前年猛增100萬臺，超過了通用（General Motors）和豐田（Toyota），一躍成為全球最大的汽車廠商。【通用去年的銷量903萬臺雖然超過了大眾的827萬臺，但其中有120萬臺要劃入它在中國的合資企業(yè)通用五菱（Wuling）的業(yè)績，而通用在五菱中只占了少數(shù)股權(quán)。】

????大眾汽車（在財富世界500強排行榜上排名12）擁有豐富的技術(shù)資源。它的50多萬名員工中，光是工程師就有35,000人。而且大眾的股東基礎(chǔ)也很穩(wěn)定，20%的股權(quán)歸德國的下薩克森州所有。過去大眾最缺乏的是方向、重心和緊迫感。2007年，大眾售出了620萬臺汽車，但稅前利潤只有區(qū)區(qū)6%。公司發(fā)展一度陷入停滯。因此大眾CEO文德恩設(shè)立了一些雄心勃勃的目標——在2018年前將年銷量提高到1,000萬臺，稅前利潤提高到8%以上。他希望大眾能成為全球利潤最高的汽車廠商。不僅如此，他還表示大眾應(yīng)該成為“世界上最吸引人、可持續(xù)發(fā)展能力最強”的汽車廠商。

????文德恩把這些多少有些矛盾的目標捆綁在一起，起了個名字叫做“2018戰(zhàn)略”。這個透明的時間表就像是甲殼蟲轎車的渦輪增壓器。2011年，大眾不僅在銷量上創(chuàng)下了紀錄，它的稅前利潤（包括一次性收益）也爬升到將近12%——這個數(shù)字對軟件商來說有些低，但對汽車行業(yè)來說卻十分搶眼。一位金融分析師甚至把大眾稱為“世界的主宰”。通過讓所有工程師圍繞著同一個目標努力，大眾成功地提高了生產(chǎn)效率，改進了產(chǎn)品質(zhì)量。最重要的是，它使大眾成功執(zhí)行了一個大多數(shù)廠商經(jīng)常嘗試卻很少成功的戰(zhàn)略：將同樣的基本零部件用于多個品牌的不同車型，從而大量削減工藝、采購和制造成本。大眾稱之為“工具箱戰(zhàn)略”。如果執(zhí)行不利的話，它可能催生一系列廉價化的汽車，不過如果執(zhí)行得當(dāng)?shù)脑挘鼘眢@人的效率。

????譯者：樸成奎

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????Every three months a team of top executives from Volkswagen Group boards a plane at headquarters in northern Germany and flies 1,000 miles southeast to a secret location near Barcelona to review the design of proposed new models under the shimmering Mediterranean light. Although the break from Wolfsburg's climate is welcome, nobody would characterize the meetings as junkets; chief executive Martin Winterkorn, a demanding engineer, is in charge, and there is a lot of work to do. VW makes 245 different models sold under 10 car and truck brands, ranging from economical SEATs built in Spain to upscale Audis and MAN trucks and buses and, at the very top, Bugatti Veyrons that sell for up to $2.4 million. Every single passenger car receives a careful going-over. VW has to get its cars right because it doesn't change them very often. After all, this is the company that built the Beetle for 65 years. Even with the intensive reviews, mistakes are made -- like the garish Bentley SUV concept VW revealed at the Geneva Motor Show in March, which one blogger described as looking "like a poor person's idea of a rich person's car." As a VW executive admitted, "In this galaxy of models we sell, there is always a decision that escapes."

????The latest chapter in VW's saga of long-running designs will be written this fall when the seventh generation of the Golf hatchback is unveiled at the Paris Motor Show. The 2013 Golf is expected to be fundamentally similar to the hatchback that was introduced in 1974, but with enough design tweaks and technological flourishes to enable it to remain the bestselling car in Europe. Few other mass-market manufacturers could get away with such predictability, but VW is making a virtue of consistency. Long the dominant automaker in Western Europe, VW is now the top-selling manufacturer in China and South America, and it is quickly gaining momentum in the U.S., where it has moved 30% more cars so far in 2012 than the year before. Globally, VW added sales of more than 1 million passenger cars last year and roared past General Motors (GM) and Toyota (TM) to become the largest automaker in the world. (GM claimed unit sales of 9.03 million last year, compared with VW's 8.27 million, but that included 1.2 million units contributed by its Chinese affiliate, Wuling, in which it holds a minority interest.)

????VW (No. 12 on the Fortune Global 500) has always enjoyed ample technological resources -- it numbers 35,000 engineers among its more than 500,000 employees -- and a stable ownership base; 20% of its shares are owned by the province of Lower Saxony. What it lacked in the past was direction, focus, and urgency. As recently as 2007, it recorded a pretax profit margin of a skimpy 6% on sales of 6.2 million vehicles. The company was stagnating, so Winterkorn created some stretch targets -- annual sales of 10 million cars and trucks with a pretax profit margin above 8% -- and set a goal to reach them by 2018. He wants VW to become the world's most profitable automaker. And that's not all. He also decreed that it should be the "world's most fascinating and sustainable" one.

????Winterkorn bundled those somewhat contradictory targets under the single heading "Strategy 2018." The transparent timetable worked like a turbocharger on a Beetle. In addition to the record sales in 2011, pretax margins (including one-time gains) climbed close to 12% -- slim for a software maker but robust for the car business. One financial analyst described VW as a "juggernaut." Aligning all those engineers with a single set of goals has improved productivity and product quality. Most important, it has enabled VW to execute a strategy that carmakers often attempt, seldom with success: using the same basic parts in dozens of car models marketed under different brands, thereby slashing costs for engineering, procurement, and manufacturing. VW calls it the "toolkit strategy." Mishandled, it can lead to a fleet of commoditized cars, but it can generate formidable efficiencies when properly executed.