Right now, Volkswagen is busy capitalizing on the crossover craze. The German automaker is planning to offer at least 30 SUVs worldwide within the next seven years and predicts at least 50 percent of its sales will be made up of SUVs by 2025. VW is already enjoying strong SUV sales, as the Tiguan SUV has reached a historic sales milestone.

VW has announced the five millionth Tiguan has rolled off the production line after being on sale for just 11 years. As another testament to the compact SUV's popularity, just under 800,000 Tiguan and Tiguan Allspace vehicles were delivered in 2018, which was the model's most successful year yet.

"The Tiguan has passed the historic mark of five million vehicles produced. The know-how of our team, the exceptional team spirit and the enthusiasm with which we produce our Volkswagen models form the basis for this magnificent success and provide a strong foundation for our SUV strategy," said Dr. Andreas Tostmann, Member of the Board of Management responsible for Production.

"The Tiguan secures the jobs of tens of thousands of highly qualified workers around the world and makes a significant contribution to earnings," Bernd Osterloh, Chairman of the General and Group Works Council, added. "For this reason, it is important that we do not reduce our investments in the development and production of the Tiguan, as we should seek to inspire our customers with this car well into the future."

Clearly, the Tiguan is an important model for VW as the automaker continues its SUV onslaught. Production of the Tiguan started in 2007 at VW's main plant in Wolfsburg, with more than 120,000 units leaving the assembly line in the first full year of production in 2008. By 2015, more than 500,000 Tiguans had been sold worldwide.

The second Tiguan generation was then introduced nearly a decade later in 2016 and was the first VW SUV to be based on VW's MQB platform. This was followed in 2017 by the larger Tiguan Allspace, over eight inches longer than the standard model and also available as a seven-seater model. In the US, the Volkswagen Tiguan is only offered with a 184-hp 2.0-liter engine and eight-speed automatic transmission.