Volkswagen Up! City Car is now production ready!

In this ever advancing world, more and more countrysides developed into cities and more and more cities merged together to form mega cities. This also changed the way car manufacturers plan their cars. Big, bulky and dirty cars are killed off while smaller, more fuel efficient and compact city cars now dominate the market.

There are not much city cars which are sold globally with only one variation (Ford Fiesta) and Volkswagen decided to be one of the first to do so. So here is their first step to global domination, the new Volkswagen Up!!

You may wonder why did I insert an unusual two exclamation mark instead of just one? Well, that’s because the car’s name has an exclamation mark in it! I know what you are thinking. This must also be the world’s first car to have an exclamation mark in it’s name. To scream out to the world that their new Up! is coming perhaps.

Please click below to read more!

Enough of it’s name, now to the serious stuff. As for the Up!’s curiously appealing look, it was based on a Volkswagen concept car with the same name shown a few years ago. We all should be glad that Volkswagen managed to stay true to the concept car. At first glance, you may have trouble spotting the difference between the concept and the production car. It is that close.

So far so good, now let’s talk about the body of the Up!. Set to replace the old and not-very-good Volkswagen Fox, the Up! is 3540mm long and 1640mm wide. Know you cars and you can see that it is very short and compact, and yet it could fit four full-sized adults in it without trouble. Volkswagen managed that by making full use of every space of the car and with clever interior packaging.

The Up! also has a wheelbase of 2420mm which is almost similar to their Volkswagen Polo. The Up! is not just a mere four-people transport, but a relatively practical one too. With all seats Up! (get it? haha), the Up! has a pretty good 251 litres of boot space. With rear seats folded, you will get an impressive 951 liters. Impressive for a city car.

The Up! concept car shown a few years ago reveals a rear-engines and rear-wheel-drive car which got us all excited and expecting a nippy and great driving little vehicle. However, there is always a however. Volkswagen mentioned that producing a rear powered and rear-wheel-driven Up! would be to expensive. So we now get a conventional front-engine and front-wheel-drive Up!.

Now let’s start with engines. The Up! will be offered with an all-new 1.0 three-cylinder petrol engine but in two different tunes, a 60hp and a 75hp version. Both engines are promised to emit less than 100 g/km CO2 which makes it exempted from emision charges in the UK. A fully electric powered e-Up! will be coming in 2013 as well as a 68hp natural gas powered Up! at a sooner date. However, the natural gas-powered Up! will only be available in left-hand-drive.

Now to the fun part. As you can see from these official photos, you may have realized that there are three distinctive Up! models, the one in white, in black, and one painted in red. The very base model will be called the Take Up!. Next up would be the Move Up!, followed by a more sporty looking High Up! which should be the red one with bigger rims. What’s with those names!

Volkswagen will also launch two special versions of their High Up!, called Up! Black and Up! White which are both shown here in pictures. With prices starting at around £8000 for the base model, you do get quite a lot of equipment for your money. Even the base model gives you stability control, power steering, and even six airbags! Only sat-nav and City Emergency Braking System are an option.

The new Volkswagen Up! will go on sale in Germany beginning of this December and perhaps a bit later everywhere else. What do you think about the Up!? I especially would like to know what you think about this naming technique Volkswagen chose to name it’s new city car. Feel free to leave a comment below. A Volkswagen Wake Up! anyone? It is just going to get interesting.