Volkswagen Group (parent company Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft) is a German multinational automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. It designs, engineers, manufactures and distributes passenger cars, commercial vehicles, motorcycles, engines and turbomachinery, and offers related services including financing, leasing and fleet management. It was the world’s second-largest motor vehicle manufacturer by 2011 unit production and has maintained the largest market share in Europe for over two decades.
Volkswagen Group sells passenger cars under the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, Škoda and Volkswagen marques; motorcycles under the Ducati brand; and commercial vehicles under the MAN, Scania and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles marques. It is divided into two primary divisions, the Automotive Division and the Financial Services Division, and consists of approximately 340 subsidiary companies. The company has operations in approximately 150 countries and operates 94 production facilities across 24 countries. It holds a 19.9% non-controlling shareholding in Suzuki and has two major joint-ventures in China - FAW-Volkswagen and Shanghai Volkswagen.
The Volkswagen Transporter, based on the Volkswagen Group's T platform, now in its fifth generation, refers to a series of vans produced over 60 years and marketed worldwide.
The T series is now considered an official Volkswagen Group automotive platform. and generations are sequentially named T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5. Pre-dating the T platform designations, the first three generations were named Type 2, indicating their relative position to the Type 1, or Beetle. As part of the T platform, the first three generations are retroactively named T1, T2 and T3.
The Transporter range of light commercial vehicles comprise a gamut of variants including vans, minivans, minibuses, pick-ups, campervans. Competitors include the Ford Transit, Toyota Hiace and Mercedes-Benz Vito.