Martin has had a highly successful career with Audi AG in Germany and other parts of Europe since joining the firm 16 years ago. He has extensive marketing and operations experience and has worked as director of Sales for Northern Europe and head of Retail Marketing and CRM.

He has been in his current role in Canada since 2009 and has overseen rapid growth in sales and expansion of the dealer network as well as notably good customer satisfaction results.

Simon Thomas, Volkswagen Group UK managing director, commented: ‘Martin has a very strong history with our company in Germany, Northern Europe, and of course Canada. Audi in the UK continues to break sales and registration records and I am sure that Martin is the ideal person to lead the brand to even greater success in all areas over the coming years.'

Martin will be based at the Volkswagen Group headquarters in Milton Keynes, and joins at a time when the UK sales performance of the “Vorsprung durch Technik" brand is at an all- time-high, with the previous milestone of 100,864 cars surpassed during September this year.