VW cuts price of 3-row Tiguan in conquest move

Volkswagen is lowering the price of the new three-row Tiguan to better "conquest customers" in the highly competitive compact crossover segment.

In a notice to dealers Thursday, the automaker said it is cutting the sticker price by $600 on the base S trim, $2,180 on the midlevel SE trim and $1,460 on the SEL trim. The price on the top-level SEL Premium model is unchanged. Dealers were told the change is effective immediately and that new Monroney stickers would be mailed to dealerships for existing inventory.

With the change, the 2018 Tiguan now has sticker prices of $25,495 for the base S trim, $27.650 for the SE trim, $31,990 for the SEL trim and $37,150 for the SEL Premium trim. Prices include shipping.

The prices are for front-wheel-drive models. All-wheel-drive versions are also reduced by the same amounts based on their trim levels.

Pricing on the Tiguan Limited -- the previous two-row model that is still in production and used as an entry-level VW crossover -- is unchanged at $22,860 including shipping, a spokeswoman said.

The redesigned 2018 Tiguan, which is about 10 inches longer than the previous model, went on sale in the U.S. in July and racked up U.S. sales of 21,023 through the end of 2017. Together, the pair of compact crossovers ranked 13th among 17 active nameplates in the 2.7 million-unit compact crossover segment in 2017 with 46,983 sales, according to the Automotive News Data Center.

The U.S. compact crossover segment -- one of the most crowded and contested -- grew 6.2 percent last year. The segment has become especially competitive at the top, where the Honda CR-V, which led the segment in sales from 2006-10 and again from 2012-16, was dethroned in 2017 by the Toyota RAV4 and Nissan Rogue. In 2011, the Ford Escape topped the segment.

In 2017, eight nameplates in the segment -- the RAV4, Rogue, CR-V, Ford Escape, Chevrolet Equinox, Subaru Forester, Mazda CX-5 and Hyundai Tucson -- each generated U.S. sales of 100,000 or more.

Average transaction prices in the segment fell 0.3 percent to $28,470 in December from November, but rose 2.5 percent compared from December 2016, Kelley Blue Book says.

Hinrich Woebcken, CEO of Volkswagen of America, has said that he wants to reposition the Volkswagen brand as more of a mass-market automaker in the U.S. to increase sales. To do so, Woebcken said Volkswagens must be priced more competitively against other domestic brands.

The VW brand's U.S. sales fell 19 percent in December but rose 5.2 percent in 2017, behind a 62 percent surge in light truck volume.