Archive for Volkswagen

There are alot of Volkswagen Golf GTIs on the roads these days, probably Volkswagen Malaysia’s best selling car. It’s at that magical under RM200K mark too, although just barely at RM198,888.

While the 2.0 liter TFSI engine is sweet, and 200 PS combined with that excellent chassis is more than enough for most people, there will be those who desire more.

Enter the Volkswagen Golf R32, set to give the BMW 130i M Sport a run for its money. This is the car that Jeremy Clarkson picked in a shootout between the two, and it could be in Volkswagen Malaysia showrooms pretty soon thanks to this sighting at JPJ Putrajaya (photos thanks to jD), which is usually where alot of new CBU cars will be parked at for type approval and other procedures before they enter the market.

A launch sometime soon in time for the Christmas season perhaps?

More photos after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of Volkswagen Golf R32 in Malaysian showrooms soon?

This is some rather exciting news – business daily The Malaysian Reserve has a report quoting unnamed sources that Proton and Volkswagen will be signing a Memorandum of Understanding regarding a tie up involving stake holding within the next two weeks. The MoU is regarding the establishment of a new company which will own certain core Proton businesses.

Volkswagen will hold 20% of the stakeholding in this new company, but it is unknown who will hold the remaining 80%. The unnamed source also said Volkswagen would have management control of the new company, and the first project is likely to be a Perdana replacement model similiar to the Volkswagen Passat.

Proton managing director Datuk Syed Zainal denied knowing of any new developments regarding the Proton-VW deal when queried by The Malaysian Reserve.

You can pick up The Malaysian Reserve at most news stands and it goes for RM1.50. I was in Mid Valley making photocopies of some documents when I spotted the Proton headline on the front page of the paper in the news stand.

I rushed to d’lish to blog this, so this post is powered by d’lish’s tasty scones, hot tea and free internet.

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Right on the back of Volkswagen’s two-door city specialist concept launched at Frankfurt, the up!, comes the space up! Concept, which as the name suggests, offers more space. The latest member of VW’s New Small Family range is strangely called the “largest small VW”, if that makes any sense, and at 3.68 metres length and 1.63 meters wide, it’s a small matter of 23cm longer than the up!

This results in a wheelbase of 2.56m, nearly 10cm longer than their current supermini, the Fox, despite being over 12cm shorter in overall length.

The entire concept is to create as much interior room as possible without taking up that much space on the road, hence offering the space of a considerably larger vehicle. The clever space concept of the space up! is mostly thanks to its rear-engine layout just like on the Beetle and the Bulli (Microbus) of the past.

Thanks to its elongated wheelbase, the space up! offers four doors, although there are in fact six doors (twice as many as the three-door hatchback up!) in this van concept car as the boot is accessed via a pair of fridge doors. Behind this door are 220 to 1,005 liters of cargo space given the multi-configurable four seat positions.

Design details include a front end featuring headlamps that take an inward diagonal line, the horizontally integrated air inlets (minimized aperture optimizes aerodynamics), the VW logo arranged on the front hood (as the only exterior detail kept in chrome) and the smooth-surfaced bumper with a lower segment.

From the side, the long extended window section flows from a clearly distinctive, powerful C-pillar to an A-pillar positioned far forward in a van-like manner. The space between the A and C pillars is spanned by the line of butterfly doors with opposing hinges. These suicide doors, in the style of the legendary Samba bus, extend across nearly the entire space between the wheel housings – i.e. the entire sill length – all four seating positions are exceptionally convenient to access.

The rear doors seem to fill up practically the entire car area above the bumper. The doors are asymmetrically split 1/3 to 2/3 and when fully opened, offer a cargo width of just over a metre.

While it certainly looks futuristic, its not really that over the top and you can imagine it going into production sometime in the future.

Click here to read the rest of Volkswagen space up! Concept

Volkswagen will be reducing its prices in the US market in efforts to catch up with its Japanese rival Toyota. It will also be removing costly frills that many Americans don’t want in efforts to further make the cars more competitively priced.

“We have definitely added too many technical items that American customers don’t want to pay for. Wing mirrors that fold inward for instance, to account for narrow streets and tiny parking spaces. Who needs that in the U.S.? The streets there are so wide,” said Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn.

Comparing Volkswagen and Toyota prices, Volkswagen’s Jetta currently has a US$1,800 premium over the Toyota Corolla, which retails at US$15,200. The Passat starts at US$23,900 while the Camry’s price is US$20,000 for a base model.

Source

The Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi says the government has not decided yet whether to allow management control of Proton by Volkswagen AG. He cited Volkswagen’s insistence on wanting to be very certain of everything – you could call it cautiousness – as one of the reasons why the deal is taking some time to be finalised.

“We want as soon as possible but we cant force them to hurry up,” added Abdullah. Apparently Volkswagen is just waiting for a nod from the government in regards to the management control.

Source 1, Source 2

Volkswagen up! Concept – a preview of the New Small Family (NSF) car?

While Tata seems to be right on track with their expected 1 lakh (US$2500) pricing of their 1 lakh car, Volkswagen’s NSF (New Small Family) project has exceeded the originally intended 8,000 Euro (RM38,000) price and is now expected to cost about 8,950 Euro (RM42,800).

Volkswagen intends to sell 462,000 units of the NSF annually, with 100,000 badged as Volkswagens in Europe and another 200,000 badged as Seats or Skodas, with the remaining 162,000 units to be sold in emerging markets.

Source

Related Posts:
Volkswagen up! Concept
Volkswagen’s rear-engined MINI fighter

The Edge reports citing unnamed sources that Volkswagen AG’s CEO Martin Winterkorn will be visiting Malaysia sometime in the next few weeks, and hopes to settle alot of questions that surround the Proton-Volkswagen tie-up negotiations to date.

To keep up to date with news on the current progress of the Proton-VW talks to date, have a look at all the related posts below, which I have listed in reverse chronological order – latest on top.

Related Posts:
More conditions for Proton-Volkswagen deal?
Volkswagen to decide on Proton in February 2008
Proton-Volkswagen talks to intensify
PM confirms Proton due diligence audit
Due diligence audit for Proton this month?
More details on Proton-Volkswagen deal

Source

Here is another short update from Thomson Financial, quoting Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, once again citing Volkswagen sources. According to the report, Volkswagen will only consider taking a large stake in Proton if the Malaysian government fully withdraws from the company, thus ending it’s Government Linked Company status. The report does not state a definition of what a large stake is. Is 20% considered a large stake or is the planned more than 51% in various stages considered a large stake?

Source

Related Posts:
Volkswagen to decide on Proton in February 2008
Proton-Volkswagen talks to intensify

Here’s a little update on the Proton-Volkswagen tie-up talks. Thomson Financial cites a report by German newspaper Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung regarding the deal and it is revealed that Volkswagen AG may take a 20% stake in Proton, and a final decision will be made no sooner than a supervisory board meeting in February. This is roughly two months after the Malaysian government’s self-imposed deadline of the end of 2007 for a tie-up deal to be decided.

Not much details about this 20% deal is known, like 20% of the entire of Proton or a certain division/divisions for instance, but it has been learned that Volkswagen wants Malaysia to cover Proton’s losses for the next 3 to 5 years. The report also states that Volkswagen plans to increase the stake to more than 50% in several steps in the future.

Source

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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.

Click here to read the rest of Volkswagen up! City Car Concept