His name is Gregory Brudny, he is Russian and he sells second-hand cars and yachts. He has offices spread across Berlin, St. Petersburg, Milan and Monte Carlo. He claims to have been in this business in Germany since 1993. Now, Volkswagen demands that he destroy 22 cars.
This is the story that brings us from Germany. The media has had contact with Brudny, who has been reported by Volkswagen for trying to sell the Volkswagen ID.6, an electric SUV originally intended for the Chinese market, on German soil via the Internet.
Now, the judicial police have seized those 22 cars.
Brudny wants to sell his 22 cars.
Volkswagen wants to destroy its 22 cars.
End those cars
According to Brudny, he does not understand why Volkswagen is so interested in destroying the more than two dozen cars it keeps in its warehouses. She assures that, to carry out the purchase, she has complied with all her legal obligations and that there is no problem when going ahead with the sale.
Volkswagen does not see it with the same eyes, which has denounced the intentions of the Russian seller to the Hamburg Regional Court, achieving that the possible sale of the vehicles is suspended and, in addition, the threat of being destroyed weighs on them. The only good news for Brudny is that, for now, the latter is not definitive.
The problem, Volkswagen points out, is that the vehicle has been produced for the Chinese market, with the specifications and demands that the market and public entities demand to approve their electric cars. Brudny defends himself and assures that Your Volkswagen ID.6 meets all standards planned for import from China and that the vehicles have been adapted with components from Volkswagen itself to be able to be sold on German soil.
And the latter seems to be true. Brudny has shown the media the documents that support this part of the story. According to them, the vehicles have received approval from the Federal Motor Transport Authority and have the TÜV certificate, the equivalent of the German ITV, as a sign that the vehicles have all the papers in order.
For example, Chinese Volkswagen vehicles do not have the emergency call that is mandatory to sell in Europe, in addition to various peculiarities in their software and infotainment systems that would prevent the sale of these cars outside of China.
Volkswagen is clear about what the fate of these 22 cars should be: its immediate destruction. Although Brudny claims to have bought its cars from FAW Group, which maintains an agreement with Volkswagen for the production and sale of the Volkswagen ID.6, the Germans assure that this is not possible, since the Chinese conglomerate only has permission to sell its automobiles within China.
The company defends its position based on the European Union Trademark Regulation and German trademark law to prevent the online seller from trading in any product with the VW logo and vehicle ID.6. This defense has obtained the precautionary measure for the sale, which lasts a maximum of three years and leaves these cars in limbo, with the possibility of being destroyed.
What Volkswagen really wants with this decision is to prevent this or any other vehicle sale from putting the brand’s cars into circulation in a market for which it was not initially intended. Brudny emphasizes that what bothers the brand is that dealers can sell a product that Not even they themselves have it for sale. in the country and, in addition, make money with them.
Thousands of euros are at stake because, according to the dealer, keeping the 22 units of the Volkswagen ID.6 in storage costs him 8,000 euros per month and the destruction of the vehicles can raise his bill by another 15,000 euros per car, to which must be added the loss of money for the investment made. “The company wants to bankrupt us to dissuade us,” the Brudny company justifies, in words reported by .
What is evident is that Volkswagen wants to control the distribution of your vehicles. It must be taken into account that cars sold in other markets may be designed with characteristics, qualities or design decisions that are specific for that place. Selling that same product in a different market is not only an attack on the brand, it can also be reputational damage to your image.
To this we must add that commercial agreements between automobile companies and groups can guarantee that specific models will not be offered for sale in other markets or that one of the two parties will be exclusively responsible for their distribution and sale. In fact, according to , in the contracts with dealers, Volkswagen warns them that they are prohibited from acquiring units of this model and selling it on European soil.
