James Fuller (automobile executive)
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James R. Fuller (September 17, 1938 – December 21, 1988) was an American automobile executive who worked for various foreign and domestic car companies before joining Volkswagen.
Fuller was born in Boston, and grew to love cars as a boy, regularly reading Sportscar Graphic magazine in his teens. In 1962, while still in college at
Fuller ultimately joined Volkswagen of America, where he directed the Porsche-Audi division and was able to increase sales 17 percent by 1981.
He was appointed to run the VW brand in May 1982 to duplicate his success at Porsche-Audi. Fuller was credited with helping to restore Volkswagen's image as an inexpensive European car with the performance and handling typical of German car makes. At the time Fuller became the leader of the Volkswagen sales division, the
Soon after taking over VW, Fuller succeeded in having the GTI version of the Rabbit (Golf in Europe) manufactured at the Pennsylvania plant, after the
The Volkswagen brand's German-ness was also emphasized by Fuller in VW marketing. When Dr. Carl Hahn insisted that the second-generation Golf bear that name in the United States and Canada instead of the Rabbit name, Fuller strongly agreed. He believed that "Golf" (short for Golf-Strom, German for "Gulf Stream") was a more appropriate name for a German brand, even in North America. By 1987, Volkswagen was using as its U.S. slogan the term "German engineering. The Volkswagen way."
Fuller could not reverse VW's slide in the U.S., despite a brief sales surge in 1985 and 1986, but he was able to keep many dealers from deserting VW at a critical time for the company's American operations. In July 1988, however, the Pennsylvania plant—a factory Fuller himself believed was a questionable idea—closed due to declining Golf sales. He had been instrumental in orchestrating the arrival of the Passat and Corrado in 1990, keeping them mostly in-line with their German roots, and he had also been a major part of the (ultimately unsuccessful) effort to bring the Rallye Golf, a four-wheel-drive, supercharged motorsport model of the Golf, to the U.S.
In December 1988, Fuller and VW marketing director Lou Marengo were flying home from a meeting with Volkswagen executives in Germany when they were killed in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The deaths of Fuller and Marengo were a major blow to Volkswagen of America, but Fuller had given the company a sense of focus that would allow it to recover in the 1990s.
Sources
- Ceppos, Rich, Car and Driver , November 1982.
- Kiley, David, "Getting The Bugs Out: The Rise, Fall and Comeback of Volkswagen in America", Adweek, 2002.