philip lebeau has more from be >> reporter: dr. martin vintercorn has good reason to smile. as ceo of volkswagen he's grown annual sales to more than 10 million vehicles and has positioned vw to pass toyota for number one worldwide. >> i don't know whether we'll spasz toyota this year but we try to achieve other targets. >> reporter: those include boosting profit margins after spending billions to expand assembly lines worldwide, including in the u.s. where sales have lagged. in part because the company has been slow to build suvs. >> yes. we did procrastinate and wait too long. of course near small end, we have to close a factory so we were reticent and now going into the offensive in the states. >> reporter: bmw starts building a new suv with more to follow. meanwhile, its biggest luxury brand, audi is cashing in on america's growing demand for high end cars. >> audi's got a tremendous amount and they're expanding their portfolio, but it really comes down to capacity and their capacity doesn't really expand until 2017 when they open up next facility. >> reporter: if volksw

philip lebeau has more on last month's auto sale. >> reporter: pardon the pun, but february auto sale ss were at $16.23 million below estimates 16.6 or $16.7 million. for the major auto makers almost all reported sales below wall street estimate ford being the one that reported declining sales with sales dropping 1.9%. what happened last month? blame it on the weather. storms really hurt showroom traffic, especially in the northeast where sales fell by as much as 50% in some markets because of the repeated snowstorms. add in ice storms in the southeast late in the month and that's a big reason sales slowed down in the month of february. that said, a couple of bright spots. pickups and suvs in heavy demand. gm truck seamales up more than 30% last month. question is what happens with auto sales this month? march is the beginning of the auto seas season where we really start to see business pick up. if weather improves most dealers around the country expect we should see auto sales move substantially higher. philip lebeau, "nightly business report," chicago. >>> stocks were sandbagged to