Volkswagen Throws up! At Us

There are so many potentially funny headlines for this article, but I went for the low-hanging fruit.  VW has been teasing us with the Up! concept and derivatives for a while now, but the real coming-soon-to-a-showroom-near-you version is debuting at Frankfurt this fall, and VW has finally given up! some details and pictures of their smallest offering.

The up! (the capital U has been dropped) fits below the Polo in VW's European lineup, as a small city car.  And it's small indeed: overall length (3.54m) it a total of 4cm longer than the original VW Polo from the 70's, and it's tiny compared to the current Polo, which comes in at 3.94m overall length for a hatchback.  The up! has a pretty good wheelbase-to-length ratio as well, with a 2.42m wheelbase and the wheels pushed to all four corners.

Under the hood, the up! will initially be offered with Volkswagen's new 3-cylinder gasoline engine family.  I'm going to say this now: someone please straight pipe one of these puppies as soon as you get it; I want to hear what an open-exhaust inline three cylinder sounds like.  The 1.0L 3-cylinder will be available in three trims: 59 and 74 horsepower gasoline-powered and 69 horsepower natural-gas powered, with BlueMotion (start/stop functionality) an option.  There will also be a full-electric version of the up! some time in 2013, and presumably a small diesel (which I'd prefer for a car like this) at some point as well.

The interior is suitably minimalist for a car like this without looking bare, something VW is particularly good at.  Of particular interest is the "PID" - Portable Infotainment Device.  (Made up acronyms make my head hurt.  MUAMMHH!)  It looks suspiciously like a Samsung Galaxy Tab (Android tablet device) on a mount, but it's still a cool idea.

The rest of the interior is a study in both space efficiency, and making something stylish out of something utilitarian.  You can tell where costs were cut - such as the single piece body-colored plastic dash moulding, no built-in nav screen (thus only one dash casting!), basic lower center console, etc.

Like many concept-to-production models, a lot of the weirdness of the up! is gone, mainly the rear engine/rear wheel drive layout (for practical considerations.)  However, it's still an interesting looking, space efficient competitor for micro cars like the Smart and Toyota iQ.  It will be interesting to see if Volkswagen makes an up! GTI with a 1.2 TSI or something.  Enthusiast material?  Not really, but the up! is a good example of creative engineering.  More photos and details should be forthcoming closer to it's debut at the Frankfurt show; stay tuned.