Total rethink: Why China is shaping Volkswagen’s global turnaround

In 1983, in a converted tractor factory on the outskirts of Shanghai, a handful of Volkswagen employees began assembling a car most of Europe had already forgotten.

The Santana was a rebadged second-generation Passat, modified, toughened and initially assembled from kits shipped from Germany. It was slow, square and utterly unremarkable. China bought nearly four million of them.