Hanover, Germany - Volkswagen was mulling the future of one of its flagship factories and major tourist attractions, as the last in the company's luxury Phaeton line came off the production line on Friday.
The company's management board is to finalise a concept by the end of 2016 for its production facility - called Transparent Factory - in the eastern German city, where car enthusiasts could take guided tours and order their own bespoke Phaeton, picking everything down to the leather on the seats.
Bernd Osterloh, head of VW's works council, described the factory in Dresden as “an absolute visitor magnet and a pearl of Volkswagen”.
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“We will certainly continue to assemble and present innovative products here.”
Osterloh said in Hanover he envisioned the discontinued model making a return as an electric car. But until that ambition becomes a reality, the engineers who assemble the Phaeton behind the glass panes of the Dresden attraction have an uncertain future.
Osterloh insisted that there would be no redundancies, but 400 of the around 500 employees at the site will be relocated to a factory in Zwickau, 120 kilometres south-west of Dresden.
EPA