Posts Tagged ‘VW’

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More (German) Cutaway Love.

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

In our current bout of obsession with all things vannish and practical we stumbled this morning across yet more beautiful graphic goodness focussed on the split screen microbus.

Nothing really to say about this apart from how gobsmack­ingly stylish these things remain, even though we still get a feeling of undeniable chutzpah every time we street past an old combi crawling along the slow lane at forty miles per hour.

Imagine how long it must take to get from, say, Sunderland to Cornwall in one of these babies. Still, if you’re not in a hurry, there couldn’t be much more of a rakish way to cruise that crawler.

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Modern Classic: The Golf GTi

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

Images: VW_​Press

It is easy to forget just how this little car changed the car world. When it emerged most stuff was rear wheel drive and badly made with overhangs.

I suppose the GTi really has signi­ficance for me because the year it finally arrived in UK spec (right hand drive) was the year I was entered this world. 1979.

Little did anyone realise that thirty-​​odd years later, that humble little boxy Giugiaro design would have such a worldwide wealth of disciples.

Volkswagen’s Golf was not the first hatch­backed car on sale but, when a bunch of VW engineers set out to make a warmed-​​over version as an after-​​hours backroom project, the result rebooted the hard drive of every car manufac­turer in the industry.

And to think it nearly didn’t happen.

Drive to work now and the subtly tasty hatchback car is a pre-​​requisite of daily traffic. It is almost certainly the favourite genre of car in the UK, and you don’t need to look far to see why.

The Golf GTI functions as a jack and master of all trades; a venerable family chariot, a sports car and one that feels special, not to mention affordable. A leading motoring journ­alist once described the mk1 GTi as ‘the sports cars you didn’t have to suffer to own.’

Prior to the Golf GTi’s birth, to reach its calibre of performance you’d need to drive a cramped coupe or a bulky saloon. The GTi didn’t have the tempera­mental traits of highly-​​strung Italian machinery, the hit-​​and-​​miss quality of British cars or the kitsch of many ‘70s Japanese try-​​hards.

It killed the kudos of Ford’s Capri and Opel’s Manta in one fell swoop. I know, because as a kid in the mid-​​eighties I watched how the Golf headed the crusade for credible front-​​drive frolics.

The hatchback package ticked off practic­ality, the Golf was ample sized and light­weight, excep­tional build quality and with one of the tautest, sweetest chassis tasted to date.

Fitted with an eager fuel injected front-​​drive four-​​pot engine the thing just inhaled meandering B-​​roads and returned decent motorway comfort, together with real-​​world mpg. You could cruise it, you could gun it, and you could do the school run without it missing a beat or costing a fortune to keep alive.

And, like a decent Sunday Roast, it’s this 35-​​year old automotive recipe that just keeps deliv­ering satis­faction and credibility.

The GTi Golf kindled the car class­lessness of its era. Bankers, race drivers, career mums and anyone in between fell for its modestly displayed sportiness. Who needed a weekend sports car when you could drive a GTi 24⁄7?

A lot of cars go down in history for their compromises, but the Golf GTi bucks that trend completely. We love it precisely because it doesn’t compromise a damned thing. Never would you see a Golf GTi classified saying ‘baby forces sale’.

There were many who thought the Beetle’s mass appeal and legendary status could never be bettered, but the GTi disproves them instantly and follows in its cult footsteps.

Of course, even champions have wobbly moments. The GTi’s thoroughbred DNA has been diluted a few times, with the lowest point for me being 1992. The mk3 was a bit chubby and, well, not very good, in my opinion.

The MK3 was launched with a 2.0-litre boat anchor that was a mere five horsepower more than the ‘70s original, and managed to be no faster in the sprint to 60mph than a 1.3 Toyota Corolla. Bad times.

VW had turned the GTi into a Vegas Elvis with all the luxury and glitz, together with a good portion of pie-​​loving and bronchial wheeze. And just like Elvis records, it kept selling.

The Mk3 did bring the VR6 though – the begin­nings of the Golf’s relationship with a six-​​cylinder engine. It sounded great, but it felt too middle-​​aged tracksuit to be a GTi. It fogged up the original GTi philosophy.

I’ve never really found love with the R32s either, but that’s just me. Once immersed into the forum-​​filled world of GTis you realise this is a religion divided by the six marks and 35 years of evolution.

You’re either a mk2 3-​​door man or an R32 lover; a G60 worshipper or a Belgian look Mk4 follower. In addition to the Golf’s multi­tasking talent of refinement with hooliganism-​​available-​​on-​​tap mentality, it happens to take rather well to modifying.

I’ve had a few GTis and have utmost respect for the genre found­ation layer. Sometimes the original gets buried amongst the flood of copycats, but VW has always seemed to keep re-​​inventing their star pupil. Besides the obvious mk1 (how futur­istic must this have looked in 1976?), for me it’s the mk2 and mk5.

The mk2 for its sheer longevity and fact it has aged as well as Jane Seymour. And the mk5 for its exquisite combin­ation of retro tartan and logoed lights.

Long may the icon shine on.

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VW:Imagining the Future

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

1XLR1
Squint a little bit and that front end looks like the Scirocco. But it’s not. The apogee of VW’s new gener­ation of aspir­ation toward hyper-​​efficiency, the new Volkswagen XL1 Super Efficient Vehicle (SEV) was unveiled at the Qatar Motor Show this year. Pioneering construction techniques, an advanced plug-​​in hybrid drivetrain and innov­ative packaging all play a part in allowing the XL1 to return 313 mpg on the combined cycle while emitting 24 g/​km of CO2 to set a new benchmark for vehicle efficiency.

2 W12 (2001)

The W12 was launched at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2001, and may or may not have been one of the earliest aspir­a­tional victims of the post 9⁄11 dip in economic bravado.

Developing 600 bhp at 7000 rpm and maximum torque 457 lbs ft at 5800 rpm, the W12 Coupé, which was commis­sioned as a design study fro Italdesign, was reckoned to reach 62 mph in less than 3.5 seconds, to go to a top speed of over 217 mph. Weighing just 1200 kg, it was slated to be one of the fastest sports cars in the world.

The key to this performance was a mid-​​mounted light­weight and compact 6.0-litre 12 cylinder engine with 4 valves per cylinder. The layout of the W12 was basically two narrow-​​angle V6 cylinder blocks joined side by side at an angle of 72 degrees onto a common crank­shaft. This makes a “double V” or “W” formation of this excep­tionally smooth and compact W12 engine.

This was of course epoch making in the end, as a version of this engine ended up in the Phaeton. On 14 October 2001 a prototype of the concept set the world record for distance covered in 24 hours. On the Nardo high-​​speed circuit in southern Italy the sports car covered 4402.8 miles at an average speed of 183.45 mph, improving on the previous record set by a Chevrolet LTS Corvette by a margin of 7.5 mph. At the same time the team of drivers broke two other world records in the W12 Coupé and six vehicle class speed records.

2: Concept T (2004)

This offroad coupé concept was launched at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, 2004. Combining genuine off-​​road capab­ility with the low-​​slung, dynamic appearance of a coupé, it initially was installed with a 241 PS V6 petrol engine, allied to 4MOTION four-​​wheel drive and a six-​​speed tiptronic automatic transmission.

0 to 62 mph was said to take 6.9 seconds on the way to a limited top speed of 143 mph.
Gullwing doors (always a press-​​gathering eye-​​catcher) first open outwards slightly before rising vertically, for convenience in tight parking spaces.

With no arches to frame them, the 19” alloy wheels appeared to ‘float’ beneath the body. This theme was continued with the striking lights, front and rear, which also look as if they are suspended in mid-​​air.

Unusually, the twin stainless steel exhaust pipes are part of the tail light modules, for a neat, more integ­rated look. For more flexib­ility, the concept T had a T-​​bar roof, whose twin panels can be removed easily, as can the rear hard top roof with integral tailgate. Hellish, innov­ative fun. A buggy for grownups.

3: Atacama (2006)

The perren­nially successful crafter van was given the rugged, offroad treatment in this concept from 2006. Built by the Design Centre in Wolfsburg, Germany it was rumoured to become a limited production vehicle, but, unfor­tu­nately, it never happened.

The design study gained its striking presence through its propor­tions. The front end, with slight modific­a­tions and the aluminium components such as the radiator, headlights or air vents, also add to the Atacama’s powerful appearance. The side air inlets in the wings lend the Atacama a sporty finish.

For protection during off-​​road use, the vehicle was equipped with robust panelling and power­fully modelled wheel arches. Aluminium inserts further emphasised its off-​​road appeal and give the Atacama a more exclusive appearance. The unique side window design demon­strates the integ­ration of exterior and interior.

The roof railing formed in a U-​​shape with integ­rated box is a modern inter­pret­ation of a carrier system. To match this element, the team designed the rear ladder which frames the brand logo in its shape and also has the door handle integ­rated in it.

We think VW missed a trick here. What more perfect a surf wagon would the Atacama have been?

4 The Eco Racer

At the 2005 edition of the Tokyo motor show, one of the biggest surprises came from VW in the shape of the rear-​​drive, mid-​​engined Eco Racer.

It had a carbon fibre shell, racing running gear and a ‘race mode’ switch that would sharpen steering and the shifts of the DSG gearbox.

The engine was a a four cylinder 1.5-litre turbo-​​diesel. It produced134bhp at 4000rpm and 184lb ft of torque between 1900 and 3750rpm. This was enough for VW to make the claim that the Ecoracer could move to 62mph in 6.3sec and on to a top speed of 142mph. It was also reckoned to return as much as 83mpg.

You could take off the top and turn it into a roadster, too. All in all– this sort of cheap to run sporting format is a rare one — hardly anyone has managed to pull these two desirable motoring poles together — and who would have been better to do that than the boys from Wolfsberg?

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The Contemporary Scirocco

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

Hipstamatics by Paul O’Connor

“Sick. It looks like a missile!” So emoted my youngest child when the Scirocco pulled up for the first time outside our house. I was, I admit, a little surprised. Because it seems to me that many aficionados of Volks world cast a somewhat condes­cending gaze on the new Scirocco. It’s as if the cognoscenti think that the only contem­porary car from the Wolfsberg crew worth celeb­rating bears the badge GTi and has five seats.

But we think such talk is nonsense. We think, having spent a good amount of time with this beauti­fully styled, brilliantly priced four seater, that it is a great car. And in fact, we’d rather have one than a Golf GTi.

The Style
As anyone reading this will probably know, we here at Influx towers are fools for good automotive design. We think that if a car doesn’t turn you on just sitting there on the kerb, if it doesn’t suggest to you the sweep and camber of movement while it’s parked, then the designers of the car have failed you, and the car itself is actually a failure.

That is why, based on looks alone, sitting there an raked, hunkered and, even, slightly menacing, can be judged a success straight away. The windscreen really is rakish and curved; so that sitting in the cabin you are treated to a lovely panorama and a bonnet that fans out low and wide to your fore and flank.

The glass all round, with its long, long door windows flowing through to pinched rear three quarter planes, whisper of the exotic.. You’re swept quite low in the driving position, with ergonom­ically exact elbow supports on a functional little centre console box and perfectly placed door sills. You feel connected in the cockpit straight away; a factor which, in our exper­ience, usually compensates for any fall-​​short in performance a car might have.

Look closely at the exterior design and there’s a lot to notice. There’s that long, low, flat roof; there are the aerody­namic bulges that smooth the line of the hinges of the hatch. The heavily louvered grill, the raked lamps and the thinly jutting scoop of the chin lend a distinctly contem­porary aspect to the car. There’s something rakish about the whole package which for us makes the Golf look a little old-​​worldy. On this press car there’s the tight turbine style alloys, an attractive coffee-​​coloured leather interior and a great ICE and Nav system. This is a desireable car and a pleasure to have around you.

The Movement
This was a 2.0 Litre TSI GT version. This means it come with a little under 210 horsepower and will cost less than a basic Golf GTi. This fact has been mulled over time and again by the motoring press since it launched in 2008, but it’s still amazing. We suppose the even crisper dynamics would be a factor in any decision to go with a Golf GTi but so of course, would be the kudos of the brand-​​within-​​the-​​brand.

The marketing department of VW has made a big deal about the Golf’s benchmark status within popular car culture, that a heavy value has been put on it. But, we have to admit, that having recently driven a version of both cars the Scirocco wins on almost every count.

We’re not sure whether the Scirocco is longer than the Golf, but in hard cornering there’s a positive, manageable feel to the former that suggests as much. The Scirocco’s chassis feels stiff enough to handle the brio of a spirited drive, yet allows you to pootle econom­ically and adjust the ride mode to suit rural lanes and urban potholes and speed bumps very nicely.

The mid range womp of the Turbo is pleasing, and despite the slight bog at lower revs, we think that the torqueyness through the centre of the gearbox compensates. That ergonomic simplicity we mentioned earlier also makes it feel like a great place to shimmy and dive and duck through the twists, and in a cursory hack over the Mendips and into the Eppynt range, we had a blast. For us there’s something about the design that is so much more pleas­ingly contem­porary than the Golf GTi: it feels as if there is no compromise at all, and the Scirocco’s lower, sleeker feel makes it feel as if it slices through the air much better than the Golf too. That said, the drag coeffi­cient of the GTi is slightly better, for some reason.

The Verdict
For us, the Scirocco is better fun than the Golf. Comparisons within a single manufac­turers’ range may be partic­u­larly odious, but it’s a comparison that’s difficult to avoid. The Scirocco may have only four seats and it might be difficult to fit a bike in the back, but it’s a blast to drive, the fuel economy is great and the dynamic styling puts it out in front of most other cars in its bracket. Including its noble cousin.

It might not be truly missile-​​like, but we’d rather ride in this than on an Exocet…

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VW_ Big Up the Buggy Up!

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

Of all the manifest­a­tions of VW audacity, the Buggy represents something partic­u­larly deep-​​lying and playful in the minds of VW enthusiasts.

They originate from the simple workab­ility of the Beetle platform and a creative impulse that is common to folk who like to tweak ‘the people’s ride’.

So when an updated version of the idea of a stripped down beach-​​oriented vehicle that is solely about fun fun fun appeared at this year’s Frankfurt show, it was always going to turn heads

The buggy up! is of course, inspired by the Californian beach buggies of the 1960s — but this one is based on the forth­coming small car star the Up!

The original buggies were custom jobs pioneered by the likes of Caifornian Bruce Meyers.

Custom shops like the one run by Meyers replaced steel bodies with hand moulded fibre­glass jobs.

The result were agile, fun vehicles that perfectly reflected the ethos of California in the sixties.

The Buggy up, meanwhile, doesn’t utilise composites — these bodies are made of light­weight steel and keeps its city sibling’s reinforced underbody, running gear and drive technology.

The roofless, doorless exterior is completely redesigned and the ride height is lowered by 20 mm. C-​​pillars are banished and the storage compartment is constructed of two pieces: the main part of the lid lifts upward like a saloon’s bootlid, but the section above the bumper folds down, like the tailgate on a pick-​​up, making it easy to stash all that fun beach gear.

There are also trad-​​style tie-​​down straps for luggage on top of the bootlid itself.

Inside there are specially designed neoprene-​​covered seats (that’s wetsuit material) which are slung low, and so engineers have reduced the basic angle of the height-​​adjustable steering wheel by four degrees. This creates a real go-​​kart like driving position, and there’s a useful handle on the dash panel for when you assault the dunes properly.

Unlike most of the original Buggie the interior is completely water­proof with a basic cloth cover — and seats, sills and floors have drains in them that will allow any pesky brine to drain away easily.

Even the controls for the iPod-​​compatible infotainment system are water­proof, and you can remove the entire module – including the integ­rated loudspeakers – so that you’ve got a sound system for your beach party.

By resur­recting a vehicle that is purely for fun, VW seem to be pushing the versat­ility of their brand — and engin­eering their ongoing status as a the daddy of manufac­turers. Wether or not the Buggy Up! will ever be produced en masse remains to be seen.

If they do so, we recommend they lose the exclaimation mark.

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Nils Concept

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

NILS, is a single-​​seat electric concept vehicle that offered a glimpse of a new form of minim­alist mobility which was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show this year.

The concept features an aluminium space frame, wing doors and free-​​standing wheels – is seeking to maintain the dynamic performance of a sports car while travelling silently and with zero emissions.

The NILS project is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development, and is designed to be both technically realistic and econom­ically supportable.

With an electric charge range of about 40 miles and a top speed of around 80 mph, NILS, would, theor­et­ically, be the perfect commuter vehicle for the vaste majority of the German population.

According to the German Bureau of Statistics, 73.9 per cent of all commuters residing between Berlin and Munich cover less than 25 kilometres (15.5 miles) on their way to work. So, the theory goes, most of us could jump in our NILS to get to work silently and quickly, then plug it in all day, before shooting home in the futur­istic manner in which you got there. And still have enough charge for a diversion to the gym, club or sausage shop.

But you couldn’t drop/​pick up the kids could you? Well, the thinking goes, it doesn’t actually matter too much.

According to VW about 60 per cent of all commuters travel by car — and of these over 90 per cent travel alone. Zero-​​emissions vehicles like NILS, so goes the argument, will offer these frequent drivers a new eco-​​friendly way of getting round.

NILS requires extremely little space in traffic. It is only 3.04 metres long – making it about 50 cm shorter than the new Volkswagen up! – just 0.39 metres wide from wheel to wheel, and a mere 1.2 metres tall.

Ironically, the concept has the same basic layout as a Formula 1 race car, with the driver in the middle, the engine in back, and free-​​standing outboard wheels. The 17-​​inch alloys are equipped tyres optimised for low rolling resistance too. These aren’t exactly slicks, however.

It wouldn’t be stretching the imagin­ation to greatly to suppose that Sebastian Vettel’s relentless success might have been the inspir­ation for the design. It was penned at Volkswagen’s Design Centre in Potsdam, Berlin. According to Designer Thomas Ingenlath, the centre’s director, the inclusion of the Gull wing doors was not only a reference to a supercar history. “[The Gull Wing doors] allowed us to create large trans­parent surfaces and simul­tan­eously to make entering and exiting the vehicle very comfortable, even in the most cramped of parking spaces.”

With it’s compact design and it’s svelte kerb weight of 460 kg, it would probably be a lot of fun to drive. VW claim a pull-​​away time of 11 seconds. Not exactly Countach-​​like, but pretty swift and perky. The steering is purely mechanical , while the electric motor produces its maximum torque of 130 Nm from stand­still, via a single speed trans­mission. Suspension is by double wishbones front and rear; while ESP (Electronic Stabilisation Programme) helps to tame any over-​​exuberance on the part of the driver. This is like a cross between a fixed gear bike and a go-​​kart in its handling characteristics.

The electric motor in the NILS has a relat­ively small 15 kW nominal power output which can spike to a short-​​term peak power of 25 kW. A lithium-​​ion battery supplies the electric motor with energy, and as it can be relat­ively small because of the vehicles dimen­sions, it is relat­ively inexpensive and can be charged from a conven­tional outlet in a little over two hours (much better than the epic eight hour charges of most of the current production Electric cars.

The centrepiece of the electric drive system an electric motor that weighs just 19KG. The energy is managed by a high-​​voltage pulse inverter, which – together with the 12-​​Volt DC/​DC converter for the vehicle electrical system and the charger – forms an integral drive unit. All drive unit components are located compactly in an aluminium housing at the rear of the vehicle — and appar­ently there’s still some room for the briefcase.

The body-​​coloured area above the rear lighting module swings upward, revealing space suitable for items such as a case of drinks and a bag.

VW have always been at the cutting edge of visions of future motoring. And while the Japanese have been matching German innov­a­tions step by step — the combin­ation of fun, flexib­ility and a quick electric charge may well be a viable vision of a future dominated by wishful thinking.

And the thing is, it still looks like a VW. All they have to do now is have the balls to actually produce it en-​​masse.

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Karmann Cheetah by Italdesign

Friday, September 30th, 2011

images Italdesign

German coach­builder Wilhelm Karmann is of course most widely known for having created the Karmann Ghia and various other cult classics for Volkswagen.

One of his lesser known projects was the Cheetah — a small sports concept for VW via Giugiaro’s firm Italdesign.

The Cheetah is a real child of its times; having debuted at the 1971 Geneva Salon.

The X1/​9–ish front end and flatbed rear was fitted over a modified Beetle floorpan bore obvious resemb­lance to various other Guigiaro projects — but less obviously the roof of the Cheetah was straight out of Mr Karmann’s stable of influences.

This pretty unique roof consisted of a a soft top with a trans­lucent sunroof panel over the cockpit, which could be stored under the car’s twin seats.

Nice bit of period futurism that probably could have foreshadowed the success of Bertone’s X1/​9.

File under missed oppor­tunity, we think.

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