VW will be staggering new, heavily-facelifted cars in an attempt to get new design coherence over the next three years, Motor Trend reports. "When Martin Winterkorn became CEO of the Volkswagen Group, including Audi, in January 2007, he threw away most of the upcoming VW brand designs, criticizing them as 'overfussy' and too distant from VW's core value of intelligent simplicity."

The list of goals are as follows: 1) Unify critical facial elements such as the horizontal grille, the VW badge, and outboard trapezoidal lights. 2) Make it easy for consumers to tell they're VWs without confusing them with one another. 3) Ditch the shield grille; the report said the designers don't like the way it visually narrows the car and think it's pretentious and derivative.

No one doubts VW builds great cars, but I think the brand has been adrift for some time—probably ever since the Phaeton debuted—so the emphasis on a new, more unified direction is certainly welcome.