Phaeton Finale

VW is going to stop importation into the U.S. of the Phaeton luxury sedan, according to Bloomberg News:

Volkswagen will pull the Phaeton out of the world's largest market, where it never met sales targets, by September 2006, said Hans-Gerd Bode, a spokesman at the Wolfsburg, Germany-based automaker. The model's 10-month U.S. sales totaled 686 cars. The original goal was to sell 10,000 Phaetons in the U.S. by 2004.

Automotive pundits and the enthusiast press were skeptical of the Phaeton from the beginning, and rightly so. Phaeton simply didn't meet the brand image of the VolksWagen, the "people's car". If they wanted to make an ultra-luxury large sedan, it should have had an Audi logo on the front of it.

Is the VW Touareg (pronounced "S-U-V") next?