Volkswagen is planning a budget vehicle
There has been quite a bit of discussion the past few years about Volkswagen entering the budget car market, a market where models will only rarely exceed four-digit prices and as such a market where Volkswagen hasn’t really had any contenders. Nothing truly materialized though, everything that we saw were rumors and incredibly vague official statements that in true vague official statement form neither denied nor truly confirmed anything in this area.
But according to a recent Reuters report, the German carmaker’s executive board is approving the budget for the low-cost car in a few weeks’ time. If this truly comes to pass then the new vehicle might get the green light for development as early as this summer. It’s a well-known fact that Germans tend to move rather quickly but we have to mention that the German source that was quoted does not say where they got the info in the first place.
As far as that information goes, this model would be aimed at “emerging markets” – this is oftentimes used as a fancy term to make the developed West feel better about itself – where it will be the new kid on the block amids a slew of cheap cars from other manufacturers.
One such market is India, where Volkswagen’s presence is nowhere near as high as they’d like it to be. This is where they’d have to fight it out with the locally-manufactured Maruti-Suzuki cars, not to mention the new Datsun Go as well as the Renault-badged version of Europe’s Dacia range.
This theoretical low-cos Volkswagen is expected to seel for the equivalent of between 6.000-8.000 Euro. It would also be most likely manufactured exclusively in China, where there’s a huge demand for this type of car and from there on it would be exported wherever needed. There is no way of knowing right now whether or not this model will show up in Europe as well, or if it does show up, if it will be badged as a Volkswagen or not.
We’ll have to just wait and see.
