The company's production grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, and in 1965, it acquired Auto Union, which subsequently produced the first postwar Audi models. Volkswagen was founded in 1937, to manufacture the car that would become known as the Beetle. The company has operations in roughly 150 countries and operates 100 production facilities across 27 countries. Volkswagen also has two major joint ventures in China ( FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC Volkswagen). It is divided into two primary divisions-the Automotive Division and the Financial Services Division-and as of 2008, had about 342 subsidiary companies. The Volkswagen Group sells passenger cars under the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, Cupra, Ruf, Škoda and Volkswagen marques light commercial vehicles under the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles brand motorcycles under the Ducati brand and heavy commercial vehicles via the marques of listed subsidiary Traton: MAN, Scania, Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus, and Navistar. It ranked seventh in the 2018 Fortune Global 500 list of the world's largest companies. It has maintained the largest market share in Europe for over two decades. In 2016, it was the world's largest automaker by sales, overtaking Toyota and keeping this title in 2017, 20, selling 10.9 million vehicles.
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It designs, manufactures, and distributes passenger and commercial vehicles, motorcycles, engines, and turbomachinery, and offers related services, including financing, leasing, and fleet management. The Volkswagen AG ( German: ( listen)), known internationally as the Volkswagen Group, is a German multinational automotive manufacturing corporation headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany, and since the early 2020s is a publicly-traded family business majority owned by Porsche SE, which in turn is half-owned but fully owned by the Austrian-German Porsche and Piëch family.