TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- Volkswagen’s new U.S. engineering office will have critical responsibility when it is fully staffed and operational later in this decade. The office will create new models adapted to U.S. tastes, a key goal for the German automaker.

And it will have an easier time doing it than in the past because of Volkswagen’s new modular approach to global model development, says Matthias Erb, Volkswagen Group of America’s executive vice president of engineering and planning.

Erb, scheduled to speak Thursday at the CAR Management Briefing Seminars, says using  VW's flexible MQB platform, for example, will allow U.S. engineers to swap out powertrains, body styles and other major components to yield new products without having to undertake entirely new projects.

“There is huge potential for us there,” Erb says. “We want to incorporate American tastes, American engineering and American tooling to develop new models for this market.”

Designing unique American-market cars is a goal of other major import automakers, including Toyota, Nissan and Honda. But Volkswagen is taking a different path.

Instead of recruiting auto industry engineers from Detroit to work in an r&d unit in Michigan as the others have done, Volkswagen intends to recruit talent to its Chattanooga, Tenn., assembly plant for the work.

“We believe the work needs to be done where the manufacturing is taking place,” Erb says.

Erb will head up the operations, called the North American Engineering and Planning Center.

Erb’s Chattanooga team has already hired the first 40 people and will staff up to about 200 by the end of 2016 for the center’s first phase.

Its first role will be to assist with factory engineering issues. It will then take over model changeovers and vehicle launches.

At that time, it will relocate to a larger building near the assembly plant to begin future model development. He says the expanding mission will require large investments in vehicle crash facilities and a test track.