Diesels Drive VW Numbers Up

Car sales numbers for January are out and there's well, good news and bad news.
The bad news is that Toyota is down about 16 percent from last January, which should come as no surprise.
The good news is that Ford and GM are seeing sales increases, at 25 percent and 14 percent respectively and so is Volkswagen.
Volkswagen, which has been pushing its TDI diesels, saw a sales increase of just more than 41 percent, selling about 18,000 cars in the U.S.
About 2,500 of those new cars sold were diesels, according to VW, which is about 13 percent of sales. And if you've had a chance to drive a new Jetta TDI or even the brand new Golf TDI, you might understand why.
Both cars are going a long way toward dispelling the stereotype image of diesels as being noisy and dirty. That's being helped by Audi's push with its great little A3 TDI, a car you just gotta love.
While the sales figures haven't been broken out, there's a good chance that South Florida once again played an important role in VW's success. After all, Gunther VW in Fort Lauderdale is the number one volume store in the country.
My money says its a smart move to keep an eye on VW, which could become a player again in the U.S. auto market.