VW sales chief quits

A senior U.S. sales manager has quit the Volkswagen North America branch just as the carmaker’s deliveries in the world’s second-largest auto market fall steeply.

Ron Stach, senior vice president of sales at Volkswagen of America, has left the automaker, a spokesman for VW in the United States said on Saturday. VW said last Wednesday that its U.S. sales rose 5.2 per cent to 339,676 brand models last year but plunged 19 per cent in December after posting their first monthly drop in 2017 in November. The world’s largest automaker by sales is keen to end losses in the United States by the end of the decade, counting on a series of higher-margin new models and structural changes as it struggles to draw a line under its diesel emissions test cheating scandal which broke in the United States in 2015. Stach will be replaced temporarily by Derrick Hatami who joined VW of America last June as executive vice president for sales and marketing, VW said.