Volkswagen may have taken over England's Bentley make, but England's language is taking over Volkswagen. The company is shifting its official language of communication from German to English over the next 5 years.
Not everyone is ready to go along; The German Language Federation dumped its shares in VW (at a profit) in protest, saying "The words Volkswagen and the German language sadly no longer go together... dismayed at how thoughtless our elites are giving up their own language and culture."
As the company has expanded not only its sales but also its manufacturing and brands to other countries, and has worked at recruiting rising executives from those countries, it found that German language skill was a major barrier, while English is much more widely learned and spoken. Japan's Honda has recently made a similar move.
VW's headquarters are in the German city of Wolfsburg, essentially a company town, and until fairly recently was not really open to foreign talent at the top. But, as the company expanded to include not only German makes such as Audi and Porsche, that's become an issue.
The company now includes Bentley, Skoda (Czech Republic), Bugatti and Lamborghini (Italy) and Seat (Spain), and Scania (Sweden). It also has major manufacturing of VWs in countries such as Brazil and Mexico.
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