What if you bought Volkswagen in 2000?
World · Germany. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play1.7× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in Volkswagen at the start of 2000 would be worth about $1,727 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Volkswagen is Europe's largest carmaker, owning brands from Skoda to Audi, Porsche and Lamborghini. In 2008 it starred in one of the strangest episodes in market history: Porsche, attempting a takeover, revealed it controlled most of VW's shares through options. Short sellers rushed to cover, and for a moment Volkswagen became the most valuable company in the world. Porsche's plan then collapsed under debt, and VW ended up absorbing Porsche's car business instead.
The bigger blow came in 2015, when US regulators revealed that VW had installed software in millions of diesel cars to cheat emissions tests. Dieselgate cost it tens of billions in fines and settlements and led to criminal charges against executives. VW responded with a costly push into electric cars, launching the ID range, and listed Porsche separately in 2022. But Chinese competitors took market share in China, its largest market, and in 2024 it negotiated job cuts with German unions. A buyer at the 2008 squeeze peak or in 2015 is well behind today.
The lesson: Price spikes driven by trading mechanics rather than business fundamentals, such as short squeezes, tend to reverse and are a dangerous moment to buy.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $55.00 | $1,727 | $4,626 | 1.7× |
| 2003 | $35.00 | $2,714 | $7,727 | 2.7× |
| 2005 | $35.00 | $2,714 | $5,763 | 2.7× |
| 2007 | $85.00 | $1,118 | $4,789 | 1.1× |
| 2008 | $160 | $594 | $4,626 | 0.6× |
| 2010 | $70.00 | $1,357 | $6,071 | 1.4× |
| 2012 | $115 | $826 | $5,312 | 0.8× |
| 2015 | $185 | $514 | $3,301 | 0.5× |
| 2018 | $170 | $559 | $2,519 | 0.6× |
| 2020 | $175 | $543 | $2,092 | 0.5× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2003, turning $1,000 into $2,714. The S&P 500 from that same year: $7,727.
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Volkswagen is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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