The business strategy of Volkswagen is to standardize platforms, components, and technologies, thus improving the firm's profitability and growth. For example, Audi uses components from their more pedestrian counterparts, sold as Volkswagen Group's mass-market brands. As an effort to place Audi as a "premium" marque, Volkswagen introduces new technologies in Audi-branded cars before fitting them to mainstream products (such as the Direct-Shift Gearbox). Nevertheless, Volkswagen uses platform sharing extensively. For example, the basic A platform underpins the Golf, Jetta, New Beetle, Audi TT, and A3, SEAT Leon, and Toledo, as well as the Škoda Octavia, while the "top end" D platform served the VW Phaeton and Bentley Continental GT in steel form and the Audi A8 in aluminum form during the 2000s.