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2015 VW Beetle GRC packs 553 rallycrossing horsepower

In case you couldn't tell from all the wings and vents, this is not your average Volkswagen Beetle. It's the rally machine Tanner Foust and Scott Speed will be driving in the Global Rallycross Championship this year. Don't let the retro form fool you – it is an absolute beast. Last year's Beetle GRC packed a 1.6-liter turbo four good for an astonishing 544 horsepower and 387 pound-feet of torque, but the new one does one better: it now features a 2.0-liter turbo four good for 553 hp and 465 lb-ft. That's right – in a Beetle. It's also got ZF dampers, 9.5 inches of suspension travel, 14-inch front brake discs with four-piston calipers packed into 17-inch wheels and, of course, all-wheel drive. The result? 0-60 in – wait for it – two seconds flat (or thereabouts). It's geared low so it'll only top out at around 125 miles per hour, but that's all it needs for the short tracks on which it's designed to compete. Foust and Speed will be driving this beast for Andretti Autosport in the 2015 championship that kicks off at the end of May in Ft. Lauderdale. Both have quite the act to follow as Foust won back-to-back titles in 2011 and 2012, and former F1 driver Speed won three rounds last season to finish third in the standings. Related Video: VOLKSWAGEN ANDRETTI RALLYCROSS TEAM UPDATES BEETLE GRC CARS FOR 2015 SEASON Tanner Foust and Scott Speed will contest the 2015 Red Bull Global Rallycross Championship with a pair of 2.0-liter Beetles Indianapolis, IN (April 29th, 2015) - After a strong performance in its inaugural season, the Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross team is ready to challenge for this year's driver and manufacturer titles in the Global Rallycross Championship. In 2015, the team will be on the attack with two Beetle GRC race cars, which debuted in the final races of 2014. This rallycross car is the ultimate expression of the third-generation Beetle. Designed and engineered from the outset as a GRC car, it features a sequential six-speed transmission, with a fixed-ratio all-wheel-drive system that features multiplate limited-slip differentials at the front and rear. For the 2015 season, the team has chosen to change the engine specification from the car that ran in selected rounds of the 2014 series. In place of that car's 1.6-liter turbocharged and intercooled TSI® four-cylinder engine, there is now a 2.0-liter TSI engine that produces 553 horsepower and 465 pound-feet of torque, compared to 544 hp and 387 lb-ft for the 2014 car.

Volkswagen is not cool with a Fiat Chrysler merger

Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller shot down Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne's overtures for a merger in blunt fashion this week. Mueller told Reuters at the Geneva Motor Show, "We are not ready for talks about anything ... we have other problems. I haven't seen Marchionne for months." The unusually candid – and icy – response from one chief executive to another comes after Marchionne similarly pursued General Motors (again) this week. The FCA boss suggested GM might be looking for a new European partner as it prepares to unload its troubled Opel and Vauxhall divisions to PSA. A GM spokesman told USA Today that the company is not interested. Marchionne has been openly suggesting a GM merger since at least 2015, despite GM never reciprocating interest. VW's "other problems," as Mueller notes, include legal proceedings, fines, recalls, and other issues related to its long-running diesel scandal. Marchionne has long sought industry consolidation, arguing that automakers don't get a proper return on their investments in technologies, some of which are relatively similar. He's suggested sharing chassis and powertrain components could be a benefit to the collective auto sector. Skeptics argue FCA, which is smaller than GM, VW, Toyota, and others, needs a partner to survive, while its rivals already have the necessary scale to remain competitive. Related Video:

Trump reportedly says he wants to wipe German cars off the U.S. map

BERLIN/FRANKFURT — A report that U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pursue German carmakers until there are no Mercedes-Benz rolling down New York's Fifth Avenue dented shares in the luxury car manufacturers on Thursday. An excerpt from German magazine Wirtschaftswoche's article, which cited several unnamed European and U.S. diplomats but did not include any direct quotes, could not be independently verified, while a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Berlin referred questions to Washington. The news and current affairs magazine said Trump had told French President Emmanuel Macron in April that he aimed to push German carmakers out of the United States altogether. Macron's administration in Paris declined to comment on the report. The Trump administration last week opened a so-called Section 232 trade investigation into vehicle imports, which could result in a 25 percent tariff on cars on the same "national security" grounds Washington used to impose metals duties in March. This could destroy exports by German carmakers, which control 90 percent of the U.S. premium market and are the biggest European Union exporters of cars to the United States. BMW owns Rolls-Royce, while Daimler has Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen controls Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche and Audi. Daimler, BMW and Audi declined comment. Porsche was not immediately available for comment. BMW shares were trading 0.5 percent lower at 0939 GMT, while Daimler and VW's shares were down 1 percent and 1.6 percent respectively, underperforming Germany's blue-chip DAX. Trump has railed against German carmakers before. And in early 2017, in an interview with German newspaper Bild, he said he would impose 35 percent tariffs on imported cars. At the time, the president called Germany a great car producer but said that the business relationship with the United States was an unfair one-way street. Germany's auto industry association VDA says its members exported 657,000 vehicles to North America last year, with total exports of vehicle components, cars, engines, as well as second-hand vehicles totaling 31.2 billion euros in 2016. Imports from the United States to Germany amounted to 7.4 billion euros, meaning a trade deficit of 23.8 billion euros the VDA's latest available figures show. However, German brands also have huge factories in the United States, where they built 804,000 cars last year, VDA said, providing jobs for U.S. workers. Berlin has reacted angrily to the U.S.