Car of the Day # 20 Volkswagen IROC Concept

This photo is from 2006, Auto Show Istanbul. And this is the IROC concept, which became Scirocco.

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Volkswagen is Peaceful with the Green: Lupo 3L

Nowadays, there are some campaigns against VW's environment concern. When all these things happened, I remembered a car from 1999! VW Lupo 3L; this car was introduced at 1999 and achieved 3 lt of petrol consumption per 100 kilometres! Sounds crazy but it achieved this crazy figure. If you don't use lt per km scale, it is 94 MPG!

This car had a 1,2 lt turbo diesel engine with 61 hp, aerodynamic design, low weight materials (whole was 830 kg) and automatic transmission. And it was capable of achieving 1000km with 34 lt of diesel! It was creating only 79gr/km CO2 on 1999, twelve years ago! But at those years, people were not concerned about CO2 or environment and the demand was too weak. As VW is a company to make profit, they stopped the production. Honestly, they did everything to sustain production until 2005 but customers did not wish to buy an environmental small car! 3L Lupo had a wrong schedule!

By the way, in automotive industry low weight materials mean one thing. It is more expensive! It is not cheap to make a car weight less. Lower weight means more composite components and this means complicated manufacturing. And this leads to increase manufacturing costs. Basically, making something lighter is more expensive than the standard production.

Before criticising an automotive company, please think twice and also consider the demand of consumers to products! It is not always possible to sustain a product with a very low demand. If you want to see the efficiency improvement in automotive industry just check the consumption of a vehicle in 2000 and now! You will see the difference.

And I am sure that VW will reveal a 1 lt vehicle soon to market.

Pictures' Copyrights
VW


Published at: http://uygarr.blogspot.com http://carsandlife.net

Volkswagen CrossPassat matches with Louis Vuitton!

Again the same; VW is going to offer a taller Passat Estate and brand it as CrossPassat (Audi did it this by turning A6 Estate into A6 Allroad). It will probably have four-wheel drive and many plastic bumpers! Similar Audi A6 Allroader and BMW 5GT, I don't see an emotional reason to buy these vehicles.

On paper, this type of vehicles fills the gap between the SUV and the estate. These cars are not as high as SUV and more practically than usual estate. However, consumers never think like this and usual find vehicles like Audi A6 Allroad, BMW 5 GT and upcoming CrossPassat a bit odd! You can see this from the sales performance of Audi Allroad family and BMW 5GT. Unfortunately, a similar scenario may happen to VW CrossPassat. I wish it won’t happen but history tells the opposite.

The rendered picture of CrossPassat reminded me Louis Vuitton Zipped Totebag. It looks very similar to SUV-Estate cars. It offers different colours in the same bag! The black parts look like the black plastics of CrossPassat. Based on this product evaluation, I can see that Zipped Tote bag is as practical as a CrossPassat or Audi Allroader. If you are planning to you buy this type of car, you should also buy this bag.

CrossPassat in second picture is under heavy camouflage!

Pictures' Copyrights

BMW, Audi, VW, Autoblog.nl, WorldCarFans, Louis Vuitton

Published at: http://uygarr.blogspot.com http://carsandlife.net