Many car manufacturers’ websites put cars immediately in the viewer’s face, displayed from any angle and in any color. VW is no exception. Over the last 50 years, however, the German carmaker has managed to convince us that its automobiles are more than the sum of their screws. They represent a lifestyle that crosses boundaries and social barriers.

As often with multinationals, the site has to cover many divergent needs and is therefore highly complex. However, the Flash sequences are limited and nicely integrated with the main HTML site. Heavy use of pictures makes it slow to download with a dial-up modem, but the brand benefits from all the ad hoc imagery supporting its positioning. Navigation menus are however largely made of DHTML rollovers, which offer an excellent compromise between speed and visual impact, compared with GIF rollovers. It helps alleviate the bandwidth requirement.

The casual visitor, and even at times the decided one, might become disappointed if unsure what to look for. It is easy to get lost in the myriad of information, menus, and Flash clips jumping on the screen. Similarly, the English-language pages sometimes lead back to German ones, which only the most perseverant (or bilingual) visitor would tolerate. Another example of a glitch that distracts from the otherwise superb brand experience can be found in the Dealers Location function, which assumes that the visitor lives in Germany (even as it displays a picture of a lost soul in front of the landmark Flatiron building in New York). On the corporate site of a multinational company that function should be more intuitive and provide for international coverage. In order to get through to the multinational level, a visitor must click on Company followed by Worldwide, and it is doubtless that the visitor will have the patience to find this path.