Late last-year, soon before the commencing of 2012 Auto Expo, racing red color Volkswagen Up! 3-door hatch was spotted for the first time in India. The car was spotted on a flatbed truck prompting speculations that Volkswagen India might showcase the Up! at the 2012 Expo. Surprisingly, the company has not showcased the Up! during the 2012 Expo.
Now a popular forum Team-Bhp member MandarMax has spotted both 3-door and 5-door of Volkswagen Up! hatch testing in Pune, India. The spotted person revealed that the 5-door version was equipped with manual transmission, whereas the 3-door version was equipped with automatic transmission.
However, we know that the 3-door automatic does not make much sense for India, it might be under testing to see how it fares on Indian roads. Meanwhile, Volkswagen India has not clarified its take on Volkswagen Up! for India so far as they have officially revealed that they are still considering the option and will take a decision on Volkswagen Up for India towards the end of the year 2012.
But the recent spy pics, swipes the mystery that the Volkswagen Up! spotted in India featured a right hand drive. As indicated from the spyshots, the Up! caught in India seems to feature premium interiors, which are a big step up from what we see on entry level cars in India. Now this info almost confirms the VW Up! onto Indian market and we expect it to be launched sometime in 2013.
Internationally, Volkswagen Up! competes with the likes of the Suzuki Alto(A-Star in India) and the Nissan Pixo. In India, we expect the car to be placed as direct competitor to the likes of the Honda Brio and the Hyundai i10. To keep the pricing aggressive, the company has to heavily localize the components of the car to keep a check on the costs.
Compared to the European version, the Up! spotted in India doesn’t features a power windows (not even in front doors), the LCD display on the dashboard is also not seen and the steering too is changed. Since these are the very initial test vehicles a lot of changes are expected in these cars before they hit the production line in Indian plant of Volkswagen.
Under the hood, the car is available with a new generation of 1-liter, three-cylinder petrol engine with 59 horsepower on base models or 74 hp on higher models, both the engines are mated to a five speed manual gearbox. In India, we can also expect the 1.2-liter TDi diesel mill from the Fabia/Polo. Besides these, Volkswagen also has an all-electric variant of the Up! for city cars buyers in Europe.
What we say? The Up! is also sold by Volkswagen group companies like Skoda and Seat. So we can expect Volkswagen Up! to be launched under Skoda badging with CitiGo moniker in India. The company has also earlier turned Volkswagen Vento into Skoda Rapid.
Also see – Spied – Volkswagen Up! in India (Delhi)
See more spied pictures of Volkswagen Up! –
Source – Team-BHP
