Who Does VW Own? Here’s Every Car Brand Under The Volkswagen Group

There’s no doubt that the Volkswagen Group is a towering colossus in the automotive industry, and really, industry in general. In 2024, Fortune calculated that it was the eleventh-largest company by revenue in the entire world, and also one of the largest car companies. All those hippies in their VW vans never realized what a capitalist powerhouse they were supporting all that time.

It wasn’t always that way, but over the decades, the maker of the humble Beetle has gone on an acquisition spree, ballooning to encompass a wide variety of makes across countries and market segments. These days, VW categorizes those brands into three groups: Core, which contains its mass-market marques; Progressive, which are lower-volume, more expensive cars; and Sport & Luxury, which Porsche keeps all to itself. Looking at lesser-known manufacturers to the biggest names in the car world, here’s every car company that the Volkswagen Group owns right now.

Yes, the rumors are true: Volkswagen owns Volkswagen. Specifically, the massive conglomerate Volkswagen Group owns the car manufacturer Volkswagen, after which it’s named. Meaning “People’s Car,” the brand can trace its lineage all the way back to the original Beetle designed by Ferdinand Porsche (at the behest of Adolf Hitler, having the only good idea he ever would).

Fortunately, the world eventually ditched Hitler but kept the car. Resurrected after 1945, Volkswagen has pumped out a number of iconic cars, including the Golf, the Jetta, and of course the bus, which is currently making an all-electric return. While you can find VWs motoring along every road in the world, it’s cars have particularly taken off in China. In 2018, the manufacturer earned 43% of its profits from that region, making the Asian superpower one of the German company’s biggest buyers, along with Europe. Together, those two regions make up three-quarters of VW’s deliveries.

Volkswagen (the car company) is part of the Core group of Volkswagen (the conglomerate) brands, as its vehicles are generally priced for a mass market. After all, affordability was what made it a “People’s Car” in the first place.

Volkswagen started investing in the Czech carmaker Škoda immediately after the fall of the Eastern Bloc in 1990, slowly increasing its ownership stake over the next decade until it finally acquired it outright in 2000. The Central European brand suffered through all the hardships of that troubled region in the 20^th Century, including state ownership under communism, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not produce very good cars. With a new lease on life now, Škoda has grown again into a major player in the European market, and it’s making inroads in other regions as well, such as India.

As you might imagine, its cars are priced aggressively to compete in the lower end of the market. That puts it squarely in the Volkswagen Group’s Core brand group. Still, the company does have a motorsport division, which has actually done pretty well. The Škoda Fabia has won several WRC2 championships in the last decade.

Spanish carmaker SEAT was fully acquired by VW in 1990, after a somewhat troubled history with its former owners, who included Fiat and the Spanish government itself. Since then, SEAT has focused on growing its presence in the European market, mostly through budget cars. That said, it did try to market itself as a sporty badge for the working man, even creating a performance brand, Cupra (ala what AMG is to Mercedes), for its top-end trims.

However, in 2018, the Cupra badge spun off into its own subsidiary. Thus far, it has mostly produced souped-up versions of SEAT cars — although starting in 2020, it introduced two of its own cars, the SUV Formentor and the EV hatchback Born.

Being budget options in the market, SEAT and Cupra are both part of VW’s Core brand group. It mostly sold in Europe — although, it is starting to push into other regions and currently plan to enter the U.S. market by 2030.

Audi produces a range of mid-to-high-market cars, generally going for a luxury feel — although, it does have a number of performance trims and models as well. The modern company was born of the merger of several others that were all owned by Volkswagen in the 1960s, and since then the marque has been associated with a lot of technological innovations in the industry. Most famously, the Audi Quattro shot all-wheel drive to widespread prominence and adoption after it dominated rally championships for years.

Going forward, Audi is positioning itself as a leader of legacy auto brands making the switch to electrification. While it has softened its original hard target of 2033 for making only EVs, it still wants to head in this direction and even get into building out its own charger network a la Tesla.

While Audi’s entry-level cars are relatively affordable, most of its range is priced high enough to push the brand into VW’s Progressive group, which is where the high-end and specialty brands live. Audi towers over this group, earning $72.3 billion its revenue and $4.3 billion of its profits in 2024.

Perhaps more than any other badge, Lamborghini defines showy, ostentatious, and downright bonkers performance cars for the garages of rich people and the imaginations of 8-year-olds everywhere. Founded in the early-1960s as a direct competitor to Ferrari, the marque has gone on to create some of the most instantly recognizable poster-worthy cars in history, including the era-defining Countach, the sharp-edged Aventador, and of course, one of the best-looking cars ever made, the Miura. Even if you’re too sophisticated and classy to want a Lamborghini, you still want a Lamborghini anyway.

Lamborghini’s financial history was pretty rocky through its early decades, but it eventually found a new home in the Volkswagen Group in 1998. Today it sits within VW’s Progressive brand group of higher-end and specialty makes. In that group’s electrification spirit, all Lambos currently on sale are hybrid, with a full battery electric vehicle on the way in 2029, the Lanzador.

The iconic “Flying B” badge has helped to define ultra-high-end British luxury cars since its founding in 1919 — though, it was a more race-oriented brand in the early decades. Its grand tourers are some of the best in the business, striking a phenomenal balance of comfort and performance that can glide you along to your next destination like you’re in a private jet. A Bentley’s interior might be better furnished, and quite possibly larger, than the room you’re in right now.

With such a high sticker price for its models, it’s maybe not a surprise that Bentley has been a low-volume seller. That means its business is understandably overall much smaller than mass-market marques, so it’s had trouble over the decades keeping its head above financial water. In 1998, that led to its acquisition by the VW Group. These days, it sits in the Volkswagen’s Progressive brand group of up-market makers, functionally serving as the conglomerate’s premium offering for its deepest-pocketed clientele.

Volkswagen began with the original incarnation of the Beetle, designed by the legend himself, Ferdinand Porsche. So perhaps it’s destiny that today, both VW and the eponymous company he would later found have come together. It wasn’t exactly a smooth marriage, though, as the 2012 acquisition was the end of a multi-year duel of attempted hostile takeovers between the two. The VW goliath, which sold sixty times as many cars, beat out the David of Porsche (which, to be fair, started the fight), and now the Stuttgart-based make is just one more badge on the mantlepiece of the “People’s Car.”

Through all that, Porsche remains one of the most famous sports car brands in the business. Its centerpiece is, of course, the 911, an all-time member of the automotive pantheon. Alongside it these days are the mid-engined 718 Cayman and Boxster and the all-electric Taycan — though, its 2024 best-seller is the compact SUV, the Macan.

Perhaps as a hat tip to the marque that bears the name of the first designer Volkswagen ever had, Porsche occupies a brand group all to itself within the larger VW Group, called Sport & Luxury. Just to make things interesting, technically speaking, the Volkswagen Group is itself owned by a holding company called Porsche SE. Don’t get too confused, though. This isn’t Porsche, the car company, but a new company spun off from the car company when the acquisition was made, so strictly speaking, Porsche owns Volkswagen who owns Porsche — look, we said the marriage was messy, ok?