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| Up minicar to go from rear to front engine placement, launch delayed |
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Volkswagen’s key new model, the Up minicar, will be delayed by up to five months because VW bosses have decided to switch its engine from the rear to the front.
VW plans to sell at least 500,000 Up variants a year in Europe, emerging markets, and possibly in the US.
The car’s launch was scheduled for 2010 but will now be delayed by three to five months until early 2011 because of the engine layout change, VW sources in Wolfsburg, Germany, said.
The delay means that the Up will come to the European market much later than rivals planned by Toyota and Fiat. Toyota’s IQ goes on sale in Europe early next year. The Fiat Topolino launches at the end of 2009. Both will have their engines in the front.
VW group CEO Martin Winterkorn confirmed to Automotive News Europe that the Up will have a front engine.
“Our engineers favored a rear engine and fought until the end for that solution,” Winterkorn told ANE.
To cut development costs, VW’s management overruled the engineers. Placing the engine up front allows the Up to share more components with other VW models.
A rear-engine layout would have given the Up more passenger space.
“A rear engine also favors hatchback and minivan variants but is more complicated for a sedan. Also cooling a rear engine is problematic,” a VW source said.
VW plans to build hatchback, minivan and sedan versions of the Up for the VW, Skoda and Seat brands in a range it code-names New Small Family.
In western Europe, the Up will compete with Smart’s ForTwo.
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| Date : 2008-07-22 |
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