il3ana: VW Concepts

Showing posts with label VW Concepts. Show all posts

A Photo Tour of the VW Group’s 2011 Wörthersee Festival with 150 Images

For the past thirty year, tens of thousands of enthusiasts of Volkswagen Group cars assemble on the shores of Lake Worthersee in Austria to participate in the largest festival of its kind in the world. Over the years, Volkswagen and the other brands of the German group including Audi, Seat and Skoda, have used the show to unveil special concepts, new models and studies that hint at future production versions or accessories.

At this year’s event (June 1 to 4, 2011), the VW Group prepared several vehicles for the festival including the production VW Golf GTI 35 Edition with 235HP, the VW Golf Cabriolet GTI and R concepts, the wild 503HP Audi A1 Clubsport Quattro study, and the Skoda Fabia RS 2000 Convertible prototype. As you may have noticed, the company didn’t show much love for its Seat brand which was left to display its current lineup.

Before budget airlines and the Channel Tunnel, the faster way to get from Britain to France was by hovercraft. The largest of these was the SNR4, a 300-ton behemoth capable of carrying 380 passengers and 40 cars at a speed of 70 mph (113 km/h). In the 1950s and ‘60s, magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics were predicting a future where we’d all be cruising around in affordable, personal hovercrafts. Sadly, it was not to be.

Now, some 11 years after the last SNR4 was retired, 21-year-old industrial design graduate Yuhan Zhang has resurrected the personal hovercraft in the form of her Volkswagen Aqua study.

Yesterday, we brought you the first images of Volkswagen’s Golf GTI Cabriolet study but today we have live photos from the car’s world premiere at the Wörthersee meeting in Austria along with official information on the concept.

The hotted-up convertible is based on the standard Golf GTI with power coming from the same 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine delivering 210-horsepower and 280 Nm (207-lbs/ft) of peak torque at 1.800 rpm.

Volkswagen says the open-air model’s performance matches that of the closed-top GTI with a 0-100km/h (62mph) sprint time of 7 seconds and a top speed of around 240km/h (149 mph).

If there’s one thing die-hard Volkswagen fans visiting this week’s annual Wörthersee Tour in Austria aren’t going to complain about, is the lack of Golf concepts. We have already shown you the Golf GTI Cabriolet and Golf R Cabriolet and now we bring you two more studies based on the flagship Golf R hatchback. The two Golf R Color concepts were first shown at the Geneva Salon this past March and were created to demonstrate the numerous customization possibilities. Read more »

Volkswagen Brings Golf GTI Cabriolet Study as well to Wörthersee Meet

And the news just keeps dropping in from the largest annual GTI Meet in the world at lake Wörthersee in the southern Austrian state of Carinthia. Aside from the 270-horsepower strong Golf R Cabriolet concept that we told you about earlier today, Volkswagen also brought along a GTI study of the recently launched drop-top model.

We’re still short on information as Volkswagen has not yet published any details, but it’s safe to say that the Golf GTI Convertible is powered by either the standard Golf GTI hatchback’s 210HP 2.0-liter TFSI or the Golf GTI 35th Anniversary Edition’s 235HP 2.0-liter turbocharged unit sourced from the Golf R. Obviously power is transferred to the front wheels either through a six-speed manual gearbox or VW’s DSG transmission. The car also appears to be riding on a lowered suspension.

This year’s Wörthersee meet in Austria is turning out to be quite an event for the Germans with the Volkswagen Group brands churning out one concept after the other. Following the debut of the Skoda Fabia RS 2000 Convertible, the German group pulled the veils off the Golf R Cabriolet study.

Using the recently introduced new Golf Cabriolet as a base, the designers and engineers of the Volkswagen R GmbH division built a convertible version of the gutsy Golf R hatchback.

Just like its closed top counterpart, the soft-top Golf R Cabriolet is powered by a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine putting out 270-horses and 350Nm (258.2 lb-ft) of peak torque from a low 2,500 rpm. The standard sprint to 100km/h (62mph) from standstill comes in less than 6.0 seconds while top speed is limited at 250km/h (155mph).

Here’s an idea: why not simply ask the public what they want in a car? Focus groups are one thing, but Volkswagen is taking this concept to extremes with its newly launched People’s Car Project. The ostensible goal of the project is to solicit advice from some of China’s 450 million internet users; advise that will shape a new model for the Chinese domestic market.

Dubbed “mass manufacturing” by Volkswagen, the Orwellian-sounding project will run for one year and gather Chinese consumers’ input in the form of text, images and film through the Zaoche website. There will also be competitions where users can vote for their favourite designs, and prizes will be handed out to the best. If proven successful, the same idea could be implemented in other regions as well.

Imagine for a second that, in the very near future, Audi is facelifting the TT to look more like its big brother R8. Then, halfway through the project, Audi cans it and hands over all its sketches and prototyping model to Volkswagen which then decides to put the two-door coupe into production.

Kyrgyzstanian graphic designer “Steel Drake” has created something very much fitting with this scenario in the form of his Volkswagen Concept Sports Car. Looking like a scaled-down, front engined Audi R8, Steel Drake’s Concept Sports is a simple-yet-sleek design let down only by some questionable design choices.

After months of rumors and whispers, Volkswagen officially announced that it will enter a factory team to the World Rally Championship starting with the 2013 season. The announcement was made in Italy, where journalists had the chance to take a first look at the car VW will throw in the competition, the 300HP Polo R WRC, shown here as a prototype. Read more »

VW XL1 Hybrid Coupe Study: Videos and Photos from Qatar

The highlight of Volkswagen's presentation at this week's Qatar motor show is the new XL1, a futuristic looking diesel-electric plug-in hybrid study for an everyday-use coupe vehicle with a combined fuel economy of just 0.9 liters per 100 kilometers or an amazing 261 mpg US.

The extremely low fuel consumption is achieved through the use of a lightweight construction, carefully honed aerodynamics and of course, the hybrid powertrain that combines a 0.8-liter twin-cylinder diesel producing 48-horses with a 27HP electric motor. If you follow the jump, you can check out live photos as well as on the road videos of the XL1. For more details on the study, read our previous post here.