78 Vw Beetle Converitible Clean And Fun Must See !!! on 2040-cars

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VW confirms Golf GTD diesel coming to US for 2016

Part of the Volkswagen Golf recipe that has helped the car sell more than 30 million units in just under 40 years is the number of variants in which the hatchback is offered. Building on that range here in the US, Automotive News is reporting that we will finally be getting the sporty Golf GTD, likely as a 2016 model. It's the GTD, you'll recall, that crosses the performance abilities of the venerable GTI with a powerful and fuel-efficient diesel engine.
After speaking with Andreas Valbuena, Volkswagen product manager for the Golf, AN not only says that the GTD will for sale in the US in a couple years, it also estimates a baseline price of around $27,000, which would place it between the current pricing for the GTI and the Golf R. The GTD is launching in Europe this summer, but we won't be getting the seventh-generation Golf in the US for another year. The news about the performance diesel model isn't entirely unexpected - VW officials have been hinting at it for at least a year now, going so far as to import a sixth-generation model for media test drives on US soil, a task we happily took them up on last year.
The Mk VII GTD uses VW's 2.0-liter TDI engine with output increased to 184 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque, allowing the car to sprint to 60 miles per hour in about seven seconds while returning more than 40 mpg in highway driving. We can't wait.

VW budget sub-brand stuck in limbo over VW standards, costs

Reports in October 2012 claimed Volkswagen had begun investigating the creation of its own budget brand. This came after having failed to purchase Malaysian car company Proton or produce a meaningful partnership with Suzuki, and after watching Renault-Nissan make piles of euro on Dacia and plot the return of Datsun. For VW, more important than the question of what to call it was how to build it profitably and in a way that didn't damage the VW brand. According to a report in Autocar, a satisfactory answer still hasn't been found. The hurdle is how to hit "'necessary' quality and safety levels" at the price points needed to make the venture worthwhile. At the time of the 2012 report, German outlet Der Spiegel said VW was trying to get prices down to 6,000 to 8,000 euro ($7,784 to $10,379 US), about two thousand to four thousand euro under the price of the VW Up and in line with the cost of a 6,790-euro Dacia Sandero in Germany. In March 2013, VW announced, "We want to bring a true budget car to the market in China in the foreseeable future," the most concrete move in that direction after years of planning to make a decision. Working with local Chinese maker FAW, it was predicted that the vehicle in question would appear around 2016, but as of November last year a final vote on it needed to wait until this year because "We are still working on the cost side" and profit possibilities for a car that "has to be durable, it has to be precise, it has to be safe." Even Fiat, another automaker long considering a budget brand beneath its Fiat line-up, wasn't sure how to squeeze any extra money from lower-cost products but was sure that it couldn't be done by manufacturing in Europe. If VW hasn't yet made the math work with a joint venture in China, it will be interesting to see how it might build a European go-it-alone business case.

VW readying two-row CUV concept for Detroit

We're likely getting yet another glimpse of Volkswagen's future crossover at the upcoming 2015 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, in January. According to Automotive News, two anonymous sources within the automaker indicate a CUV concept will be shown there. The concept is said to be a five-passenger preview of the brand's future seven-seat model. Previous versions of the crossover have carried the name CrossBlue (pictured above), but there was no indication whether or not that would continue. The original three-row concept debuted at the 2013 auto show in Detroit, and VW followed it up with the CrossBlue Coupe Concept in Shanghai later that year. In early 2014, the company announced the CUV would go into production sometime in 2016, along with plans to invest $7 billion in North America over the next five years. During the summer, the automaker made things even more official when it declared plans to invest $900 million to build a 538,000-square-foot expansion into its Chattanooga, TN, factory to assemble the new model. Production of the crossover was slated to begin by the end of 2016, at the time. According to Automotive News, even more changes in VW's CUV lineup are on the way. The Tiguan is reportedly getting an update next year that could be joined by coupe and long-wheelbase variants, as well.