Volkswagen

Remember the GTI Cabriolet concept that Volkswagen showed at last year's Wörthersee festival in Austria? According to Auto Express, Volkswagen will introduce the drop-top GTI as a production model at the Geneva Motor Show in March. The go-fast car is based on the Golf Cabriolet, which is not sold in ...    Read more

Want advertising time in the Super Bowl? For 2011, 30 seconds carried an average price of $3,100,000 and the trend shows no sign of slowing down, based on all the automotive interest this year. From 2007 through 2011, Nielsen data show that automotive advertising in the Super Bowl far surpassed spending ...    Read more

As expected, the 2012 Volkswagen Beetle will soon get a third engine choice in addition to the base 2.5-liter and turbocharged 2.0-liter gasoline engines: a 2.0-liter turbodiesel. Volkswagen announced that the 2013 Beetle TDI will debut at the 2012 Chicago Auto ...    Read more

It might be a stretch to call last month’s mid-size sales race a competition: not only did the top two competitors cement their respective places, the margins between the winners and losers were very, very wide. There’s no point in trying to escape the fact ...    Read more

With more than 220 models sourced from more than 90 production facilities, the Volkswagen Group has a lot to gain from even the smallest manufacturing synergies. So the new MQB architecture that will underpin the majority of the company’s front-wheel-drive vehicles is a massively important program. MQB (the acronym stands ...    Read more

The Volkswagen Jetta and Passat helped VW reach 27,209 sales in January of 2012, making it the best selling German automaker in the United States, and giving it its best January since 1974. Among the luxury automakers, Mercedes-Benz took the lead over BMW with its 6525 C-Classes helping push it ...    Read more

Following up on the teaser video featuring a chorus of adorable barking canines, Volkswagen has released its full Super Bowl commercial ahead of this Sunday's big game. The video previewed on YouTube will be cut down to just 60 seconds in length for the actual Super Bowl broadcast. The new ...    Read more

Classic car insurance company Hagerty released its annual “Hot List,” a top-ten list assembled by the company’s valuations experts that predicts which current vehicles will the collector cars of the future. To qualify for the list, vehicles must be mass-produced, sold currently, and have an MSRP under $100,000. Hagerty ...    Read more

The 2012 Golf R lands in dealerships this month, and Volkswagen is promoting its latest hot hatch with a new app for the iPad. Loaded with Golf R info and Golf history, the app is meant to provide users with all the videos, photos, and tech specs they ...    Read more

The four-door version of Volkswagen’s Up! subcompact goes on sale in Germany this may, the automaker announced today. The four-door model offers the same engine options, available features, trim levels, and dimensions as the two-door version, but makes it a bit easier for rear occupants to get in ...    Read more

Been away from your computer this week and missed all the automotive news? We’ve gathered a few of the top stories of the past week for your convenience. 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Spied Our spy photographers ventured to the northern reaches of Canada in order to snag these spy photos of the ...    Read more

Just days after General Motors proclaimed it was the top-selling automaker of 2011, the Volkswagen Group is crying foul. The German automaker says that, once it includes sales figures for truck divisions MAN and Scania, Volkswagen’s 2011 sales will eclipse those of GM. GM announced earlier this week that in 2011 ...    Read more

After blowing away most of the automotive competition in last year's Super Bowl ads, Volkswagen is returning this year...with dogs. The German automaker has released an amusing teaser video that suggests it wants to have the same advertising impact this year as with 2011's "The Force" about the new ...    Read more

Volkswagen has been priding itself on the fact that, according to the automaker, sells around 75 percent of all diesel passenger cars in the U.S. Get ready for that percentage to grow – at the Chicago Auto Show next month, VW will add the 2012 Beetle to its oil-burning repertoire. The ...    Read more

Mazda plans to bring the SkyActiv-D diesel engine to the U.S. market as early as 2014. The move is said to help the automaker differentiate itself from other automakers who offer hybrids to increase fuel economy. The turbocharged 2.2-liter four-cylinder diesel engine that Mazda currently offers elsewhere makes 173 horsepower ...    Read more

Just as parent Volkswagen plans to build an electric version of the Up! hatchback, Skoda also will produce a zero-emissions version of the Up!-based Citigo city car. According to Auto Bild, the e-Citigo will launch in 2014, about a year after the VW e-Up! goes on sale. Skoda announced ...    Read more

We joined a roundtable with Ulrich Hackenberg, member of the board of management for Volkswagen AG, responsible for product development during the Detroit auto show this week. Hackenberg says that localization is the most important thing to VW's continued growth in the U.S. That means the volume engines we get ...    Read more

Someone pour some beer and celebrate: the final sales numbers for 2011 are rolling in, and it looks like Toyota has fallen to Volkswagen for the number two spot in worldwide numbers last year. CarAdvice reports that the German automaker delivered 8.16 million vehicles last year, up an admirable 14.3 percent ...    Read more

Volkswagen’s BlueSport mid-engined two-seater has hit a few bumps on its road to production, according to Autocar. Rumor has it that the German automaker can’t find the sales to justify producing the car. The biggest obstacle is apparently the U.S. market, as Volkswagen of America’s management believes having ...    Read more

2013 Ford Fusion Maybe it’s because I woke up extra-early to see the car unveiled at 8 a.m. Monday, but I am seriously impressed by the new Ford Fusion. The design, while clearly derivative of Audi, Jaguar, and Aston Martin, is fresh and expensive-looking. The range of five different powertrains ...    Read more

This funky two-seater is the Volkswagen E-Bugster, an all-electric concept car that is based on the new-for-2012 Beetle. It mixes the funky, retro-inspired design of Volkswagen’s new Beetle with the zero-emissions drivetrain that will eventually be found in an electric version of the Golf. Before Volkswagen revealed the E-Bugster car, ...    Read more

Volkswagen’s headlining debut in Detroit is the 2013 Jetta hybrid, which will be only the second hybrid vehicle that the Volkswagen brand has sold in America (after the Touareg hybrid). Although official EPA figures aren’t yet available, VW estimates the Jetta hybrid will return 45 mpg combined. The most efficient ...    Read more

You might have noticed that this December 2011 German auto sales roundup is out a day later than sales from the rest of the world. There’s a very good reason for that: BMW and Mercedes-Benz’s rivalry. Both automakers reported record sales and were neck and neck to take the title ...    Read more

It probably wasn’t a good year for Toyota overall--it struggled with supply and production issues after an earthquake in March--but don’t tell that to the Camry. The ubiquitous mid-size Japanese sedan handily bested its mid-size competitors last year, in a big way. ...    Read more

Although the 2011 auto show circuit initially focused mostly on new production debuts, concept cars began to come out of the proverbial woodwork as the year progressed. Venues like Geneva, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and L.A. brought us dozens of show cars that sent jaws hurdling towards the floor and left us ...    Read more