I HAVE good news from planet Volkswagen. Like, really good news.
Two of our favourite small cars, up! and Polo, are being remastered for the electric age. Even as spicy GTIs.
The up! is being remastered for the electric age[/caption]
Plus, other famous names like Golf, Tiguan and Passat are here to stay.
Now that might seem obvious to you and me.
But when VW launched its ID electric car family in 2020 — with ID3, ID4 and so on — all the nameplates we grew up with were at risk of being thrown away with the petrol engine.
Not any more.
The new gaffer wants to keep the lot. Blinding. So he’s going to phase out the ID numbers instead.
I reckon the ID2 concept will actually be called ID Polo when it hits the road this time next year — and eventually just Polo when the petrol car is outlawed.
‘Last piece of the jigsaw’
ID3 will be replaced by a proper ID Golf at some point, and then, when everything is electric, it will just be Golf. But that’s a long way off. There’s another heavily-facelifted petrol Golf to come yet.
I’m also thinking ID4 will eventually morph into ID Tiguan and then Tiguan. ID7 will become ID Passat and then Passat.
Right, let’s circle back to the up!, unveiled last night as the “ID.Every1” concept.
But it’s the new ID up!.
Small, cool, simple, fresh. Everything you’d expect from VW, really. Nippy 95hp e-motor powering the front wheels, 155-mile range, room for four, 305-litre boot, £17k. But we won’t get it until 2027. Racy up! GTI to follow.
VW boss Thomas Schafer said: “It’s the last piece of the jigsaw — providing affordable electric cars for everyone. This size of vehicle is specific because it needs to serve 17-year-old beginnners to 100-year-old folks, nurses to pizza delivery drivers.
“So, on one hand it has to be practical, but on the other you want it to be exciting, so people don’t actually care whether it is electric or combustion.
“This car makes me smile every time I see it. I’m 100 per cent sure people will love it.”
ID Polo is bigger and goes further. Price: £21k. Power: 226hp. Range: 280 miles. The huge 440-litre boot beats today’s Golf.
We’ve already seen the ID Polo GTI. Hubba. Hubba. I’m thinking £25k?
The “ID2 X” concept will be unveiled in September — but that’ll be your ID T-Cross by the time it hits the road.
Schafer said: “We want to streamline the portfolio into something that people understand.
“We worked for decades on making sure that the world knows what a Golf is, what a GTI is, what R is, so in the future that will be the trajectory of where we are going.
“There will be a shift to names. But we haven’t completed all the gaps yet. We need a few more weeks to finish this. The line-up has to fit the names.
“You can’t just give anything a name and say ‘you are now, henceforth, known as’, it’s got to fit.
“If we put a GTI together, we have to make sure it is a proper GTI. It has got all the DNA, then we put our stamp on it, otherwise don’t call it that.
“We have seen examples in the industry where people call something something else and it’s not true to the core and then it fails in front of the customer. We won’t do that.”
So you won’t slap a Scirocco badge on an SUV?
Schafer said: “Absolutely not. We would never do that. It’s a mistake to call something that it is not. Be very careful. If it’s a GTI, it better be a GTI. If it’s an R model, it’s got to be true to the genes.”
Engineers are busy testing electric GTI prototypes — adding “turbo lag” and other deliberate software glitches to make it feel old school. If you want it.
There’s even talk of a six-speed electronic gearbox and an electronically-controlled mechanical slip-diff. GTI Clubsport?
An insider said: “If it’s done properly it can be so frickin’ cool.”
All these little VWs look so frickin’ cool.
The ‘ID2 X’ concept will be unveiled in September — but that’ll be your ID T-Cross by the time it hits the road[/caption]
