The Next Big Thing from Volkswagen

Volkswagen and Suzuki are already in the battle at the court. Both the car manufacturers are looking to take the battle to the roads as well with their upcoming cars. Volkswagen has drawn first blood with the launch of its small car slated to be launched in January 2012 auto expo. The car will be called as the Volkswagen Up and will be the new small car from the company in India. The car is expected to come at a price range of Rs 3 to 4 lakh. The car will be cheaper compared to its Polo model. Volkswagen will be looking to lock horns with the Maruti Suzuki's A-Star with this launch. The Volkswagen cousin, Skoda will also be joining the battle with the launch of its own small car called the Skoda Citigo. In fact both the cars will share the same platform. The Citigo is expected to come at a price tag of Rs 2.5 to 3.5 lakh and will be cheaper compared to the up, which will look to lock horns with the Maruti Alto K10. Meanwhile Suzuki is not sitting idle as well. The company is in talks with Fiat and is planning to come up with a diesel engine car in the next two months. Suzuki has also reached back to its peak production capacity at its Manesar plant. The recent strike caused a huge downfall in production of cars of up to 20,000 units. This clearly impacted its most selling models like the Swift and the Swift Dzire following the recent labor unrest at the plant. The up! Is already available in the United Kingdom in October 2011 and comes in five models. They are the Take up!, Move up!, High up!, up! Black and up! White. The car is priced at 7,995 pounds for the base level variant which roughly translates to 6 lakhs. The high end variants cost 11,180 pounds which is approximately 8 lakhs. The deliveries for the car are scheduled to begin in Jan 2012.Initially it was speculated that the Citigo, will be the first one to make it to the roads. But later both Volkswagen and Skoda have decided not to have any rift among them and have decided to go ahead with the launch of the Volkswagen up followed by the launch of the Citigo. The Volkswagen Polo for small car is a tough little beast. The car has a modest 59bhp and yet it seems quite refined at almost 4,000rpm on the clock and 70mph. The car easily breaches the top speed of 100mph for the 59bhp version and hits 0-62mph acceleration in 14.4 sec. switching off the air-con and unfurling the topsail would give the much needed boost as well.The car has CO2 emissions of 105g/km. It also comes with a Blue motion version of stop/start system, overrun-biased alternator battery recharging and the eco tyres delivering low emission figures of 67.2mpg and 97g/km. The Volkswagen will compete with the likes of premium small cars in India like the Maruti Swift, upcoming Renault Pulse and Nissan Micra.