1998 Volkswagen Lupo – Driven To Write

A developing markets car that was out of tune with European tastes.

The Volkswagen Group doesn’t do cheap and cheerful. Its four⁽¹⁾ mass-market brands all have a reputation for producing high quality⁽²⁾ cars. One can reasonably argue that these brands are insufficiently well differentiated from each other in terms of quality of materials, build and equipment. Hence, Volkswagen has too much overlap between its brands so has not maximised its potential total market coverage.

The company must have watched on enviously as Renault resurrected the moribund Romanian Dacia marque and turned it into a highly successful budget brand, which is exactly what Volkswagen might have done with Škoda. That appeared to be the plan when the first wholly VW-era Škoda, the 1996 Octavia, was launched. This was a larger but cheaper and plainer take on the Golf. Subsequent models, however, became increasingly sophisticated, to the extent that there is little to Continue reading “Missing the Marque: Volkswagen Fox”

We celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Volkswagen Up! and its siblings and wonder if the city car has a future.

The 2011 Volkswagen Up! is Wolfsburg’s third generation city car. Unlike other models in its range, the smallest car received a different name for each iteration. This is explained, at least in part, by an apparent hiatus in product planning along the way, with the second-generation Fox being a stop-gap⁽¹⁾ import from Brazil.

Volkswagen’s first city car was the 1998 Lupo. It was introduced because the company realised that the increasing size and weight of its Polo B-segment supermini left room in its range for a smaller model. The original 1975 Polo, essentially a rebadged Audi 50, was a petite thing, with a wheelbase of 2,335mm (92”), overall length of just 3,510mm (138¼”) and kerb weight of just 685kgs (1,510lbs). By the time that the Lupo was launched, the Polo Mk3 was 72mm (3”) longer in wheelbase, 205mm (8”) longer overall and an extraordinary 236kg (520lbs.) heavier than the Mk1. Continue reading “Which Way Up?”