Photo: Volkswagen
The VW Up! is a city car designed by Volkswagen group together with two other models using the New Small Family (NSF) architecture. It's made in Bratislava, Slovakia, and has been relatively well received in Europe thanks to its build quality. It eve n scored the 2012 World Car of the Year award and has been selling well.
As with any really small car, a lot of compromises have been made to make it affordable and efficient. This results in shortcomings, like the lack of legroom, power and a fast automatic transmission.
During the launch of the new Golf GTI in Australia, the company's technical head of transmission development Michael Schafer revealed a lot of interesting facts about the next generation car to local car magazine CarAdvice.
He said that because of the very small front compartment, they could only fit the car with a single-clutch automated-manual transmission for the automatic model. Of course, not a lot of European buyers buy automatic gearboxes in this class, but the company wants to make a better city car next time.
Schafer said the next generation Up! is coming in 2017 and will have room for a better optional automatic. He said this could either be a DSG they develop themselves or a normal automatic bought from Getrag or Aisin or Jatco.
This latter option is favored because developing a small DSG would not be economically justifiable due to low volumes. In addition, buying an off-the-shelf unit would make the Up! cheaper.
The engineer also said a slightly longer nose for the car will allow them to fit TSI turbo engine, which would improve economy and performance.
The Up! would also face much more stringent crash safety tests in 2017, so a longer nose will allow them to improve pedestrian safety.
During the launch of the new Golf GTI in Australia, the company's technical head of transmission development Michael Schafer revealed a lot of interesting facts about the next generation car to local car magazine CarAdvice.
He said that because of the very small front compartment, they could only fit the car with a single-clutch automated-manual transmission for the automatic model. Of course, not a lot of European buyers buy automatic gearboxes in this class, but the company wants to make a better city car next time.
Schafer said the next generation Up! is coming in 2017 and will have room for a better optional automatic. He said this could either be a DSG they develop themselves or a normal automatic bought from Getrag or Aisin or Jatco.
This latter option is favored because developing a small DSG would not be economically justifiable due to low volumes. In addition, buying an off-the-shelf unit would make the Up! cheaper.
The engineer also said a slightly longer nose for the car will allow them to fit TSI turbo engine, which would improve economy and performance.
The Up! would also face much more stringent crash safety tests in 2017, so a longer nose will allow them to improve pedestrian safety.
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