Archive for Volkswagen

I have no idea what’s gotten into the people who run the Perak State Government’s heads… perhaps this is an attempt to woo Volkswagen back to Malaysia (and Proton). The Perak State Government announced today that it is going to set up a world class city in Perak and call it Volkswagen City. It will offer a “variety of services and products linked to the German automaker”.

Perak Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin said that the new Volkswagen City will be a tourist city catering to the increasing number of Volkswagen enthusiasts around the world, offering spare parts and exhibition galleries for the Volkswagen brand. As for where and when, Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar said the matter had not yet been discussed with the relevant parties.

Perak is also host to Proton City, a township located 5km north from Tanjung Malim. Proton City is home to industrial, commercial and residential properties including Proton’s car assembly plant and Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris.

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Cartrade-ABT is the new sole distributor for Abt Sportsline performance products in Malaysia. Cartrade-ABT will be focusing on Abt Sportsline upgraded cars and kits for Audi and Volkswagen cars and its first showroom is in Bangsar at 79, Jalan Maarof.

Expected turnover for the first year is RM50 million, a target that may very well be achieved considering how popular the Volkswagen Golf GTI is on Malaysian roads. Shown above is the Abt Sportsline GTI VS4-R, which is a Golf GTI tuned by Abt.

There will also definitely be a market for Abt kits for the newly launched Audi A4 - you can see how the other two premium German manufacturers have responded to the demand of kitted up C-segment luxury sedans here in Malaysia in the form of the BMW 320i Sports and the Mercedes-Benz C200K Avantgarde.

Volkswagen’s TwinDrive Plug-in Hybrid Prototype is based off a regular 4-door Volkswagen Golf, or at least that’s what you think from appearances. Under the hood is something completely different - an electric motor paired together with either a TDI turbodiesel or a TSI turbocharged gasoline engine.

The main method of propulsion in the city is the electric motor, which is powered by high density lithium ion batteries that can be charged via a plug-in power socket. For long range extended hour journeys the combustion engine can be used.

Volkswagen has insisted that unlike other hybrids where the motor supplements the combustion engine (like in large Toyota hybrids), Volkswagen designed their TwinDrive system to have the combustion engine complement the electric motor.

Combining both the TSI/TDI engine and the electric motor results in a peak power of 174 horsepower, and this is reflected on the car’s dashboard via a kilowatt meter instead of an RPM meter. Twenty units of the TwinDrive Golf prototypes will be deployed as part of a test fleet. In a 100km test journey from Potsdam to Berlin, the Golf TwinDrive managed to use just 8kWh of electricity and 2.5 liters of fuel.

A photo gallery is available after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of Volkswagen Golf TwinDrive Plug-in Hybrid

The Volkswagen Gol is one Volkswagen that is sold mainly in Brazil and some other markets where it is known as the Volkswagen Pointer.

It’s a relatively low-cost car of sorts, heavily localised in design like how the Volkswagen Lavida was conceptualized for the Chinese market. In fact it would not be entirely off target to call this new third generation Volkswagen Gol a hatch version of the Chinese Lavida, since they are both based off the PQ34 Volkswagen Polo platform.

This new third generation Volkswagen Gol looks like a Scirocco with four doors, with some elements from the new Tiguan thrown into the mix. It measures 3900mm long, 1660mm wide and 1450mm tall, with a wheelbase of 2470mm. Luggage space in the boot comes up to 285 liters. It has quite a budget interior, to the point that it’s meter panel excludes an RPM meter, but a temperature gauge is retained.

Two engines are available, a 1 liter and a 1.6 liter from the EA111 family. They are tuned for city driving, which means lots of torque low in the rev range. The 1.0 liter engine puts out 95Nm of torque at 3,850rpm, which is close to the 100Nm per liter ratio and nearly 1,000rpm lower than the usual peak torque point. If ethanol (it is Brazil after all) is used as fuel, you get 104Nm, more than the 100Nm per liter ratio. Peak power of 72hp (76 for ethanol) kicks in at 5,250rpm. It’s decent power for a car that weighs 934kg.

The 1.6 liter is also very torquey at low RPMs, offering 154Nm at 2,500rpm with petrol fuel! With ethanol you get an additional 2Nm of torque at the same peak point. Peak horsepower is 101hp at 5,250rpm, with an additional 3 if you use ethanol.

A full gallery of the third gen VW Gol is available after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of Third Generation Volkswagen Gol Details and Photos

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Volkswagen actually has a sedan variant of the Polo called the Volkswagen Polo Classic, and it has been in existence ever since the first generation Polo which had its sedan counterpart called the Volkswagen Derby.

Production bases of the current Polo Classic are located in Brazil, South Africa and China. Australia receives the Polo Classic from the base in China, and the model is the first right hand drive Chinese-manufactured car to be exported to a “developed country”.

In the South African market, it is available with three petrol engines (1.4 with 83hp, 1.6 with 100hp and 2.0 with 114hp) and one turbodiesel, the 1.9 TDI (100hp, 240Nm). Volkswagen plans to introduce it in the Indian market soon, probably with a 1.4 TDI engine like the Fabia that is offered there.

Cars such as the Polo Classic sedan are important for car manufacturers as with rising global fuel prices, more and more customers are downsizing their vehicle choices in terms of size, and for sedan-centric markets this means sedan vehicles have to be developed for vehicle segments that have been traditionally filled with hatchbacks. When a sedan model is planned as part of the model line-up from the beginning the vehicle can end up looking very good, like the Mazda 2 sedan.

Look after the jump for two TV commercials featuring the Polo Classic.

Click here to read the rest of Volkswagen Polo Classic Sedan

The next generation of Volkswagen Polo variants are just around the corner as the first of the new platform’s offerings have already been launched in the form of the new SEAT Ibiza. The CrossPolo (photo shown above, also called the Polo Dune in the UK) will be replaced by one with proper soft-roading capabilities, including 4MOTION all-wheel drive instead of the CrossPolo which is available in front wheel drive only.

It will carry over styling from the Volkswagen Tiguan, and will likely look like a miniature version of the Tiguan at least from the front. It will compete against upcoming rivals such as the BMW X1, the MINI Crossman SUV, and the Audi Q3.

The engine range will start from a modest inline-3 1.2 liter producing 60 to 70 horsepower, with a 1.4 liter 85hp model coming next, followed by a 1.2 liter TSI producing slightly over 100 horsepower.

Related Posts:
Volkswagen CrossPolo 1.6 Test Drive Report

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The Volkswagen Scirocco will only be on sale in Europe this summer. The car uses the Golf GTI’s chassis and thus shares the same wheelbase, but has a wider track thanks to components lifted from the Volkswagen Passat CC.

The 2.0 liter TFSI model is not the EA113 we have grown to love installed in cars such as the B7 Audi A4, the second generation Audi TT and the Volkswagen Golf GTI, despite having the same bore. It is actually a new engine family with an EA888 codename. Word is that new batches of the above cars all have the new EA888 engine instead of the older EA113. One way of identifying it is a chain drive instead of a belt drive. The new EA888 engine is also much more boost friendly as the block is more hardy.

You will find after the jump 4 videos of the Scirocco’s interior as well as motion shots.

Click here to read the rest of VIDEO: Volkswagen Scirocco In Motion

According to Thai newspaper The Nation, Volkswagen is expected to meet the Thai Industry Minister Suwit Khunkitti and the Board of Investment (BoI) before July 2008 to finalise its proposed eco-car project investment in Thailand.

Volkswagen’s intended investment in Thailad is estimated to be valued at a total of RM2.52 billion, much higher than the other eco-car proposals as Volkswagen has no major presence in Thailand at the moment, so it would involve setting up things from scratch, including parts sourcing.

The Germans are reported to be reconsidering its eco-car investment as financially it might not make sense anymore following the Thai government’s new push for E85-fueled cars, which now enjoy significant tax reductions.

Whichever way Volkswagen goes, what’s pretty much certain is that they’re setting up base in Thailand for the region, and future Volkswagen Malaysia cars will most likely come from the new production base there.

Bosch has developed a new ECU which has an integrated ESP controller as well as all the necessary sensors such as yaw-rate measurement sensors and lateral acceleration sensors. This results in a more compact ESP setup as the ESP control box and controllers are no longer separate items that take up engine bay space.

The new more compact system will allow ESP stability control to be offered in smaller cars with limited engine bay space, and the system’s first customer is Volkswagen, who has already implemented it in a producion car: the recently unveiled 4th gen SEAT Ibiza.

The Mark 6 Volkswagen Golf due to be unveiled by the end of this year will be immediately profitable for Volkswagen, unlike the current Mark 5 which only started being profitable 2 years after it was introduced in 2003. Volkswagen will make an operating profit of 5% on each Mark 6 Golf, which is apparently much more than what it makes on the current Mark 5 Golf (shown above).

Volkswagen says this is thanks to savings in production costs of roughly Euro 1,165 per car, which is attributed to the abolition of a four day week, better materials purchasing, and higher planned production volumes. I sure hope “better materials purchasing” does not mean using materials of a lower quality though!

Related Posts:
Volkswagen Golf Mark 6 to get new 1.2 liter engine