The Volkswagen up! has been spied testing in Pune on Nagar Road by one of our readers Dhananjay Mandhare. The VW up! is a compact hatchback designed for urban commuting in Europe. The hatchback is already on sale in many global markets and a localised version is expected to be rolled-out in India soon.
In its most basic form the up! is a bare bones commuter but can be upgraded using various packs offered by VW. Given the success of the vehicle, the German automaker has designed over 20 concept cars based on it. The compact car is a part of the VW’s New Small Family Platform (NSF) and is expected to spawn a compact sedan as well.
It is offered with two sets of three-cylinder 1.0-litre petrol mills producing 60PS and 75PS respectively. Power is transmitted to the front wheels via a five-speed manual gearbox. The higher variants across both engines are offered with a five-speed automatic gearbox with 75PS getting the option of Bluemotion technology also.
The German automaker had previously said that it would take them a while to bring the up! to Indian market as they wanted to achieve an optimum level of localisation before launching the compact car. However, with VW now undertaking a massive expansion plan in India, it is likely that the up! will reach our shores much earlier than expected
