kind-of... When Ferdinand Piëch ran VW he turned it into a high end brand from the late 90s until 2010 or so, with quality actually higher than high end luxury

kind-of... When Ferdinand Piëch ran VW he turned it into a high end brand from the late 90s until 2010 or so, with quality actually higher than high end luxury brands at the time and some crazy high end models like the V10 twin turbo Touareg, and the W12 Phaeton. Even the Bugatti Veyron supercar, the fastest street legal car in the world at the time, was initially planned to be released as a VW model. Weirdly, VW was selling higher end models than the affiliated Audi/Porsche brands for a while. A spec'd out VW from that time period makes a high end BMW or Mercedes from that era feel really cheap. Even the cheaper models like the Beetle and Golf felt really high quality compared to just about any other car at the time. Customers couldn't really bring themselves to pay the high end luxury prices VW was charging for something with a VW badge, so they went back to making low end cars... the current VW lineup are again all pretty low end cars.