Who’d have thought a little gathering in Austria could give birth to three stunning concept cars. This is VW's new Scirocco GT24 concept and it's appearing at the Wörthersee Tour alongside the Audi TT and A3 Clubsport Quattros.

The Volkswagen Scirocco GT24 concept is a road version of the trio of racecars that will compete in this weekend’s Nürburgring 24-hour race. And like the VW Golf GTI W12 concept from 2007, the VW Scirocco GT24 is a runner. According to Volkswagen the GT24 is also a pointer towards how an ‘R’ version of the Scirocco could look.

Spot on, and that forced-induction 2.0-litre makes 321bhp and 251lb ft. It’s mated to VW’s obligatory six-speed dual-clutch ‘box with power going to the front wheels. Why no four-wheel drive? Because even the earliest reports about a hot Scirocco pointed towards an R20 with a tweaked 2.0-litre turbo, rather than the new coupe using a V6.

To beef up the gearbox there are new clutch plates, alongside revised gear ratios and a lightened flywheel.

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If you head over to the Volkswagen Spain website today, you’ll be welcomed by an image of a new Touareg Cabrio bringing back horrible memories of the Audi Cross Cabriolet Quattro from the LA Auto Show. Well let’s just thank God that the Volkswagen Touareg Cabrio is just a practical joke by Volkswagen, celebrating ‘Day of the Innocent Saints,’ a holiday in Spain which resembles April Fool’s day.By egmCarTech

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The Tokyo Motor Show today saw VW unveil a second iteration of their new small family car – a third model will be shown at the LA Auto Show in November 2007.

Called the Space Up!, the rear-engined car is a stretched version of the three-door we saw at the Frankfurt Motor Show earlier in the year. It’s still rear-engined, but now there’s even more space, and Mini Clubman-esque doors.

The 2560mm wheelbase is now only 18mm shorter than the Audi A3's, thanks in part to the 18-inch wheels being pushed out to each corner. Overall the Space Up is 230mm longer, and 40mm higher than the three-door Up. But VW still reckons it’s 150mm shorter than their current smallest model, the Fox.
The Space Up is all about versatility. All the seats bar the drivers can be folded or completely removed, which means up to 1005 liters of space, which is only 75 litres short of the A3. And that is before you put anything under the bonnet. There’s even a door that can be opened in the passenger foot well to allow for long loads.

This is all made possible by the rear-engined layout, and the VW press release teasingly says the car could be petrol, diesel, or electric powered. Expect three-cylinder power for European models, which should start at £4000 for the three-door.

The rear now has a pair of side-hinging doors, just like on a Clubman. But unlike the Clubman, whose doors open around the lights, the doors on the Space Up are translucent panels into which LED tail lights are set.

And thanks to the stretched wheelbase access to the rear is better thanks to two new butterfly doors, or suicide doors, or whatever the marketing speak is these days.

The driver gets a touchscreen to control functions like the air-con and entertainment system. The screen also tells you how much CO2 you’re emitting. Volkswagen are currently developing the Up range to appear in production form before the end of the decade.

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Volkswagen on Frankfurt Auto Show unveiled what it hoped will be the modern-day successor to the Beetle: the Up! concept, a small city car targeted at the young, the cash-poor, and the environmentally aware.

Available with either a rear-mounted two- or three-cylinder engine, a production, rear-wheel drive Up! is expected to go on sale in global markets by 2009 with a target starting price of €6000 (around £4000), substantially undercutting competitors like the Toyota Aygo and Citroen C1. It will even slot below VW’s current baby, the Fox, being 50mm shorter (the Up! is 3.45 meters long and 1.63 meters wide). Insiders say it will form the basis of other small VWs too, as well as sister products for Seat and Skoda.

No details are yet available on the two-cylinder model, but the three-cylinder will employ the Polo BlueMotion’s 1.4-cylinder engine. Yet where the Polo weighs 1170kg, the Up! is likely to fall below 1000kg – impressive considering its airbags, ABS and crash protection structure – so expect 60mph to come up in under 12sec with a top speed in excess of 110mph compared with the Polo’s 12.8sec and 109mph.

Furthermore, where the BlueMotion represents what VW’s engineers can do with an existing design, the Up! is a ground-up project with an environmental focus from the off. At best fuel will be consumed at a rate of 3.0 liters per 100km (94mpg), at worst 3.5 liters per 100km, much like the European-only Lupo of some years back.

Inside, minimalism rules as do digital displays – an 8in monitor shows the car’s vital signs and a 7in monitor provides access to navigation, telephone, stereo and more - that can be scrolled through via simple hand movements and touchscreen commands. The four seats all feature air pockets that automatically adapt to different body shapes, and three of the seats fold flat into the floor or can even be removed entirely for maximum load space. Naturally, with the rear-engined format (essential for engineering in adequate crash protection), there’s storage space in the nose, but there’s also some behind the rear seats too.
The Up! should be the most recyclable Volkswagen ever built, VW recently teaming up with recyclable materials expert SiCon with the aim of making future cars 95 percent reusable.

The Up! project has moved quickly under the guidance of Dr Martin Winterkorn - this being the first VW he will oversee from inception to completion - getting to its current stage in well under a year. Expect evolutions of the concept to appear at the LA and Tokyo motor shows before the production version is readied for 2009.

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Probably all of you have seen Golf GTI and you already know everything about that car, but Volkswagen decided to build even faster prototype Golf GTI W12 Concept.

It has a motor 6,0 W12 of 650 horses, it does the 0 to 100 in 3,7 second and reaches 325 a terminal velocity of km/h. Generously wide his kit of body includes prominent lateral air intakes and a redesigned ceiling to act like diffuser of air and aileron.

It has been presented in shot of tuning Wörthersee 2007, like the Audi Clubsport Quattro, you haven't expected Golf beyond the R32 or R36. Or you did?

Here is a recording of the “Top Gear” show in which Jeremy Clarkson and The Stig test the Volkswagen Golf GTI W12 Concept. Watch the video to see their conclusions.

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