It's quite interesting really, Volkswagen saw it fit to remove fair simple and cheap features of their best selling car to save costs, but they've added another supermini SUV to their line up that is a massively niche market. (T-Cross, Taigo, T-Roc, T-Roc Cabriolet
).
Then have two saloons that are the same size (Passat and Arteon), competing against each other. (I did see a Arteon Estate the other day, very nice car by the way).
It's becoming more and more evident that Volkswagen is getting closer to becoming where Skoda used to sit in the VAG Family, as Skoda and Seat both continually proving to be better looking and better value.
I really like the mk8 and see a lot of potential for a 8.5 to be exceptional, but their budgetary constraints and software really need sorted.