Gadgetory

well if your Volkswagen you don't just lay there like a dumbass and let Fiat get all the headlines with the 500 you answer it with this the Volkswagen up this is a car it's in roughly the same class size wise it's below a golf by a significant margin in terms of overall footprint as well as in price we'll get to that in a minute now right now it's only slotted for European introduction but you can just about bank on it come into the u.s. sooner than later now under the hood here you've got a pretty scrawny 3 cylinder 1 liter engine not sure that would come to the US one and if this car ever does they might up rate that for the American market get it closer to 100 horsepower right now it's a 64 a 75 horsepower mill give or take with really good efficiency really clean low emissions this car will come stock with a city collision technology one that will look forward with ultrasonic or radar whatever they use to keep the car from rear-ending someone at low speeds that's usually the kind of technology that was only reserved for much more expensive cars wherever they came from but now we're seeing a lot of the small cars offer that as a differentiator okay so here I am 62 plus in this little guy and as is always the paradox with little cars there's some of the roomiest inside because they have very thin door panels not a lot of filigree and built up consoles and make a car seem tight this car is entirely spacious for everyday driving it's not something going to take on a 3,000 mile trip and lay back in very simple instrument panel you've got what do we got here a little tiny tack on the left that's interesting fuel gauge on the right big speedometer finally that makes some sense too many cars are giving too much real estate to tachometers I love gauges as much as anybody but you know what the tach it's time for it to go it doesn't make a lot of sense anymore often you'll find color-keyed dash panels here that go with the car body that's very fiat 500 not saying they copied them but that's kind of the style right now here's the most interesting thing navigon makes a snap-off portable infotainment units I'm pretty sure it won't snap off here oh look at will what trusting people are Volkswagen friends are and here are your choices information about the car again because connected to the cars data bus when you dock it you can't do that with a standalone pnd here's your media player pictures CD player control because this again connects to your optical disc and car radio control against something your stand alone won't do your bluetooth phone controls and technology are in here and of course your navigation and map all that in a nice slim unit that is actually a portable electronic sort of a Bene you get when you buy this car we're starting to see a lot of car makers go this way now the pre-orders begin shortly in europe for this car in Germany in particular and by top of 2012 these are going to be out but again in the European market where their pricing it at below 10000 euros I've been in this business too long to say oh just convert that to dollars it never works that way currency conversion aside but it's a cheap little car it's bringing up the bottom of the VW line and it's going to answer one big question why don't they bring the Polo to the US which slots down below the Gulf they're going to do this one instead