A glimmer of good news stood out in Tuesday’s gloomy Volkswagen results. Despite a one third slide in profits, Germany’s largest car company has reported a sales surge in one little-known product.
The group sold 5.2 million VW-branded vehicles last year, but a record 8.5 million products with the component number 199 398 500 A.
What is this beloved component? The VW currywurst, manufactured by the group’s own in-house butcher at its Wolfsburg headquarters.
Forget the Beetle: the currywurst – a bratwurst sausage slathered in ketchup and curry powder – is now officially the VW group’s single most popular product.
During last year’s strikes against job and salary cuts, German VW workers clearly turned to comfort eating, with sausage sales up 200,000 year-on-year.
Given VW employs 76,000 people in Germany, sales of 8.5 million currywurst would mean each employee eats 112 sausages a year – or one every second working day.
[ Volkswagen grapples with sliding earnings amid crisis ]
Thankfully there is an explanation: the currywurst, introduced in 1973 and available at all VW plant canteens, is also sold at selected supermarkets in the surrounding state of Lower Saxony.
The soaring success comes four years after plans by one VW canteen to remove the currywurst from its menu prompted a minor earthquake. There was even an intervention from Gerhard Schröder, the former Lower Saxony governor (and VW board member) turned chancellor turned disgraced Russian gas lobbyist.
Back in August 2021, when people still cared about his opinion, Schröder denounced the currywurst cull as an attack on the working man’s “power bar” – and the sausage was saved.
In other good news: VW workers in Germany can look forward to a €4,800 bonus. At €3.44 for a currywurst with chips in the canteen, that bonus is enough money for a 199 398 500 A component every working day for lunch until the end of 2030.
Long term, the greater risk to Germany’s VW labour force might not be cost-cutting lay-offs, but sausage-induced heart attacks.
