The Volkswagen Touareg and its Porsche Cayenne sibling serve as the perfect example for the synergies between VW and Porsche. Porsche developed both SUVs, while VW builds them at its Bratislava, Slovakia, plant. Porsche fits V-8 engines into the SUVs’ bodies in its Leipzig, Germany, facility, while the V-6 engines of the entry Cayennes are fitted at VW’s plant in Slovakia. The partnership has worked well: the Cayenne has served Porsche's existing customer base while bringing new buyers to the brand, and the Touareg bolstered VW's claim that it is a premium carmaker more convincingly than the ill-fated Phaeton.
This weekend’s running of the 24-hour endurance race at the legendary Nürburgring is not just playing host to racing dreams, but also to the launch of the Volkswagen Scirocco R. The third and latest generation of the VW Scirocco is not for the U.S., but it's still fun to keep tabs on, especially since the R gives us a glimpse of the Golf R that should arrive on our shores later this year.
Volkswagen bills the Routan as a “stylish alternative to the minivan,” and we have it from no less an authority than actress Brooke Shields, who in Routan ads claims that its German engineering drives women to motherhood (to qualify for ownership). The TV spots starring Ms. Shields, herself a mom, were clearly zunge in der wange (German for tongue in cheek), but we confess that this minivan alternative looks a lot like a real minivan (German for minivan) to us. If it weren’t for the VW fascia and big VW logo (six inches in diameter), you might even mistake it for, say, a Dodge Grand Caravan. Which, of course, it is. Mostly.
Walter de'Silva, Volkswagen's chief designer, is wasting no time deploying his new styling language across the VW lineup. After the debut of the Golf VI, VW needed to pull the Golf Variant—known in the U.S. as the Jetta SportWagen—forward to match the base model's new looks. VW is now launching the new Golf Variant in Europe, and its new nose (if not its powertrain lineup) will transfer to the U.S. later this year.
Remember how the Rabbit Cup cars of the early '80s would lift an inside rear wheel in tight corners? How the first imported '83 Volkswagen GTIs would dance around that tight road course in the commercials set to "Kleine GTI," the German version of the Ronnie and the Daytonas song? Sure, the original Rabbit GTI's live rear axle is long gone. Still, there's something in the character of the GTI that suggests an affordable, yet well-balanced hot hatch -- the original hot hatch -- that leaps about corners with an attitude defying and yet celebrating its front-wheel-drive.
Volkswagen first toyed with the idea of reviving a small, mid-engine roadster with its cleanly styled ConceptR for the 2003 Frankfurt Motor Show. While the car garnered mostly positive reaction, it ultimately failed to make the production line. Two years later at the Tokyo Motor Show, another roadster concept, called the EcoRacer, was shown by Wolfsburg, once again stirring hopes that VW would eventually build a fuel efficient and agile sports car for the masses.
When we schedule vehicles for year-long stays, we attempt to take a cross section of what's available to the public-from hybrids to trucks to sports cars. But aside from a Chevrolet Silverado 2500D a while back, diesels have been a scarcity in our garage, though no fault of our own. Few were available and fewer met California emissions.
Driving an SUV is tough these days. Some people look down on them for being too big and inefficient, and with the unpredictable price of gas, these vehicles can be expensive to operate. What is an SUV buyer to do? There are two solutions. The first, buy a smaller, more efficient vehicle that won't do everything you want or need. The more appealing choice, though, is to find a big SUV with the right power, size, and luxury that does it all on less fuel.
Rumours of a hotter VW Scirocco – something akin to the GT24 concept we saw earlier this year – have been circulating furiously for a while now. If and when it turns up, could it look anything like this, the new tuned Scirocco from German turners ABT? We wouldn’t be too upset if it did.
Volkswagen has taken the wraps off the Up!, an all-new model that the German marque claims could lead to an entirely new range of cars. One of the most interesting aspects of the new VW Up! is the engine location - in the rear of the car. There's also a good chance that it will be driven by a range of low emission 'green' engines.
Volkswagen has wowed the LA Auto Show with a three-wheeler concept called the GX3. The GX3 could become a production reality in the US, because it would be classed as a motorcycle and as such would be able to use congestion-busting 'car pool' lanes. The open cockpit two-seater has been pared to the minimum and uses motorcycle-style instruments.
We had high hopes for VW's new Golf GTI. Then we saw pictures of it last week. And then we saw it here in Paris. Hardly world-shattering is it? Looks the same as the last one, with the Scirocco's now-not-so-exclusive front end. Yes, they've pushed the front fog lights out to the edges to make it look wider and they've put the twin tail pipes on either side instead of together, but really, we're not amped up about it.
Volkswagen likes to tell us the Golf is the car for everyman, which is a non-gender-specific term also embracing everywoman and running the social spectrum from everytoff to everychav. But truth is, in Britain at least, we all know the Golf is as ineffably middle-class as speech day at a minor public school. How could it be otherwise, given its unchanging small-‘c’ conservative being, and its air of understated superiority? Its very solidity is the four-wheeled embodiment of the mildly smug ‘British reserve’.
