Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (sometimes referred to as Volkswagen of America, abbreviated to VWoA), is the North American operational headquarters, and subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group of automobile companies of Germany. VWoA is responsible for five marques: Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Volkswagen cars. It also controls VW Credit, Inc. (or VCI), Volkswagen's financial services and credit operations. The company is headquartered in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, near Herndon. In Germany, the parent company Volkswagen AG is responsible for eight marques of the group, from six European countries: Volkswagen, Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, Škoda and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles. As of March 2008, VWoA has 20 operational facilities, spanning coast to coast, and its primary objective is ''"to offer attractive, safe and environmentally sound vehicles which are competitive on an increasingly tough market and which set world standards in their respective classes". On July 16, 2008, Volkswagen AG announced plans to build its first production facility in the United States since the closure of its Westmoreland Assembly Plant in 1988. The Volkswagen Chattanooga Assembly Plant was inaugurated on May 24, 2011, and currently builds the US-spec Volkswagen Passat and in 2017 started production of the Volkswagen Atlas. History Foundation Formed in October 1955 in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, to standardize dealership service in the United States, it grew to 909 Volkswagen dealers in the US by 1965 under the leadership of Dr. Carl Hahn. Under him and his successor as president of Volkswagen of America, J. Stuart Perkins, VW's U.S. sales grew to 569,696 cars in 1970, an all-time peak, when Volkswagen captured 7 percent of the U.S. car market and had over a thousand American dealerships. The Volkswagen Beetle was the company's best seller in the United States by a wide margin. From then on, however, intense competition from American and Japanese automakers caused VW sales in America to fall as much as 87 percent between 1970 and 1992, despite the introduction of new front-drive models in 1975 to replace the Beetle and its rear-engined, air-cooled stablemates. As a result, the number of dealerships in the U.S. was also reduced to 630 by the mid-1990s. As of 2007, there were 596 operating Volkswagen dealerships in the country. Westmoreland and Auburn Hills VWoA inaugurated the Volkswagen Westmoreland Assembly Plant near New Stanton, Pennsylvania, in 1978. This was the first modern venture by a foreign automaker at making cars