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Volkswagen pulled a surprise on us with the Frankfurt Motor Show – it is exhibiting the small rear-engined rear wheel drive city car that was talked about early in February this year. It’s funny how Volkswagen has gone back to the RR format that it’s iconic Beetle had decades ago – all it’s modern cars are front wheel drive or all-wheel drive.
The new car is called the Volkswagen up! city car concept and it runs on a completely new platform and drivetrain. The 3.45 meter long car is intended as an aspiration for a new family of small and very efficient cars from Volkswagen.
In the current concept form, the up! Concept runs on a choice of compact two or three cylinder engines. Interior space for 4 passengers is maximised by pushing each of the four wheels as far into the four corners of the car as possible.
Volkswagen has also attempted to modernize the interface with which we communicate with the car’s on-board systems. A touch sensitive screen in the interior has the ability to sense specific hand movements of the user to access the climate, entertainment and vehicle function controls. A second screen mounted ahead of the driver in place of the usual meter cluster relays critical information on the vehicles systems along with a real-time read-out of the amounts of CO2 being emitted.
More photos after the jump.
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After dabbling for years in the IT industry, Paul Tan initially began this site as a general blog covering various topics of personal interest. With an increasing number of readers paying rapt attention to the motoring stories, one thing led to another and the rest, as they say, is history. An avid electronic gadget aficionado as well as big-time coffee lover, he's also the executive producer of the Driven motoring TV programme.
Plain, but nice
The way I like it
a very weird and will not be made car
nowdays all car become smaller please make it bigger for big guy
great competition for the toyota iQ. i guess it’s small to suit an urban setting in the city. this is also supposed to lower co2 emissions and also consume much less fuel than a full sized car. being small also helps ease traffic jams and helps out in parking too. in fact, it will be great if we have such cars here (at a realistic price of course) to drive around in the city. from my observation, most cars have only one or 2 occupants so it makes this car practical too. for the outstation journeys then we use our full size cars lah.
wildthings, it looking small may be an optical illusion. i suppose that the car is also designed to fit someone with a 6ft frame as well.
Looks like the real spiritual predecessor (regardless of shape) for the VW beetle. Cheap (Hopefully), economical, RR powertrain layout, and small.
Will they beat Tata’s 1 lakh (RM10k roughly) econo-car?
When I looked at the rear profile I thought I saw an Apple monitor… but the car looks clean and nice overall, RR, good choice, this will make it stand out!
I wonder why VW bothers in the first place?! Toyota iQ turns the glare up! on VW
Small cars are going RR due to safety reasons.
With the engine in front, you have limited crush space in an accident. Unless you utilize something like Mercedes’ design that pushes the engine under the car in a crash (A class), you really dont have much choice but to put the engine at the back.
yeah I heard about that too… one car expert predicted that a few years back, bout the RR future.
But anyways, hope VW strikes some deal with Proton and this affordable car becomes ultra affordable for the masses…
Looks like FIAT 100 but sterile german version.
looks very much like myvi