VW on the up!

VW’s new Up city car won’t take up much space on their mammoth show stand at next month’s Frankfurt Motor Show – it’s a tiddler for eco-urbanites, but it looks to make good use of its small footprint.

The Up, an entirely new design from VW - to replace the Fox - offers four seats but for a more minimalist footprint; 3.54m long and 1.64m wide, and we’ll be seeing its smaller stature on European streets this December. 

Upon launch, Up-punters will have a choice of three cheekily named trim levels, from the entry-level take up!, the comfier move up!, and top-notch high up!. Are you keeping up!

All-new small car means all-new small engines, and VW have taken the 3-cylinder route to lower CO2 emissions with 60PS and 75PS turbocharged petrol performance available. The 60PS motor will see a sub-100g/km CO2 rating and around 65mpg thanks to VW’s BlueMotion Technology which includes a Stop/Start system. Pipeline plans also feature an electric drivetrain.

Inside the Up, VW has worked hard to bring space and tech to the segment with four seats for four adults and a good-size boot that expands from 251 litres (rear seats up) to 951 litres, with seats flat. 

A first for this segment is the optional City Emergency Braking system that automatically activates at speeds under 18mph when a laser sensor detects the risk of an impending collision, and so hopefully reducing the severity of that collision. Who wants to be the first person in town to own a car with a laser! 

Other space-age tech in the Up includes, for the first time in a VW, the maps + more system which is a mobile Personal Infotainment Device (PID). This system was developed to organise navigation, telephone, information and entertainment, and was designed in cooperation with Navigon, one of the world’s leading suppliers of navigation systems. 

The user snaps the PID into place above the centre console and the system then syncs with the car’s network of systems; navigation, telephone and infotainment can then be controlled and viewed via the maps + more touchscreen, which can also be used to view vehicle information, such as the parking sensors display. There will be Up-specific apps, too. 

See the new Up in the flesh from mid-September at Frankfurt, where no doubt VW will have fuller pricing and performance details for us.






































By Daniel Anslow

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