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2015 Volkswagen GTI: Clicking, beeping, and trying to stay cool [w/video]

My first car didn't have air conditioning. Well, that's not entirely true. The car had A/C, it just didn't work. Nevertheless, I survived summer after summer of sweating behind the wheel – par for the course in a 15-year-old Mitsubishi with 235,000 miles on the odometer. But it's another thing entirely when that same experience happens in a 2015 Volkswagen GTI after just 7,000 miles of use. That's how Autoblog kicked off summer with the long-term GTI: sweating in plaid seats. The car went to Suburban Volkswagen in Troy, MI, where the technicians told me the air-con just needed a recharge (despite asking them to inspect it further). They recharged it, the air blew cold, and 48 hours later, the A/C stopped working again. (Surprise!) The problem was a leak in the compressor/condenser line, so a new one was installed, the system was charged, and now it's fixed. For real this time. Unfortunately, that second-coming happened during a road trip with editor-in-chief Mike Austin at the helm. His logbook comments are, as you'd expect, appropriately salty. "Everybody loves the GTI, right? Not quite. I drove to Toronto for a weekend. On the way home, the A/C quit working. This wasn't too much of a problem until we hit the border control line to re-enter the United States. I always pick the slow line, somehow. Thusly baked in the heat, with outside temperatures above 80, the GTI didn't cool back down for the rest of the trip. Then I learned we already fixed the A/C once." "Of course, any car on that day with a surprise A/C failure would earn my ire," Austin notes. "It just seems a little more irritating on a new car. Otherwise, yeah, this is a great car." A great car, indeed. Everyone loves spending time with the GTI. It's got plenty of power, it's quiet, it's comfortable, and it eats up highway miles. We've got just over 10,000 miles on the odometer as of this writing, and as summer carries on, many editors have requested extended periods of seat time in the GTI for weekend getaways and longer road trips. But it's still not perfect. Following the A/C fiasco, there's another, more curious problem plaguing the GTI. Every time the car starts, a weird, varied-tempo, loud clicking is heard from the dash. We think it's coming from the direction of the glovebox, and it's not the same click patten every time. Sometimes it's one or two knocks, sometimes it's several. See what I mean in the video below. Weird, right? Another trip to Suburban Volkswagen offered no help.

Brazil contemplates safety exemption for VW Kombi as it goes out of production today [w/poll]

Brazil: the country of carnivals, indescribable beauty adjacent to abject poverty, Ayrton Senna and old Volkswagen models. Only they're not old - they're new, they're just based on old designs. The original Beetle continued production there long after it had been phased out elsewhere, but the original Kombi van has lasted much longer. That ends today, however, with the iconic VW Microbus ambling out of production on the last day of 2013.
VW kept making the van in Brazil with the original air-cooled 1.2-liter boxer four until 2005, after which the original design was updated with a 1.4-liter water-cooled engine. Today, however, it ultimately falls prey to safety regulations that mandate that all vehicles - no matter how old their design - need to have airbags and ABS, forcing Volkswagen do Brasil to cease production of the Microbus after a 56-year production run. But the latest word is that the Kombi (as it's presently known) could get a stay of execution - or at least a resurrection in short order.
According to reports, the Brazilian government is looking into granting the Type 2 Microbus an exemption from said safety regulations, reasoning that the van was designed long before the advent of airbags and ABS. If the measure goes through, the Kombi Last Edition (pictured above) could prove not to be the last at all. So what do you think, should the Microbus get an exemption from Brazilian safety regulations for nostalgia's sake? Vote in our poll below, then have your say in Comments.

Audi spending an additional $2.5 billion on expansion through 2019

Every year, it seems the Volkswagen Group announces a new and larger spend to push growth and profit, with Audi a regular recipient of the moolah. That's reasonable, seeing as hauls in 40 percent of Group operating profits. In December last year Audi said it would spend an additional 100 million euros ($122M US) per year through 2018 to develop new models and expand production, targeting 60 models by 2020 and luxury sales leadership. This month Audi said it will boost that by another two billion euros ($2.5B US) over the next five years, for a total outlay of 24 billion euros from 2014 to 2019. Something like 70 percent of those billions will be spent on new models, technology like "connectivity and lightweight construction," and factory expansion at its plants in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm. Most of the ten models that will plump the lineup to 60 cars will mainly be aimed at the C and D segments, as well as crossovers, the brand's burgeoning portfolio of PHEV models, and all-electric cars that will begin staking ground in the segment. The big spend comes at the same time as Audi is working hard to reduce costs by $2.5 billion to maintain profitability, part of a larger push by VW to cut costs by $6.1 billion by 2017. More than a billion euros will go to new factories in Mexico and Brazil. Work begins on the Mexico plant next year, and when it comes on-line in 2016, Audi's Q5 successor will roll out of its warehouse doors; Audi has already announced it will hire 850 more workers next year in Mexico. When that's done, Mexico's production of German luxury cars will only trail that of Germany, China and the US. The company's Brazil plant will produce the A3 and S3 starting next year, and the brand figures luxury car buying there will triple by 2017. News Source: Reuters Earnings/Financials Plants/Manufacturing Audi Volkswagen Luxury Mexico Brazil ulrich hackenberg