Listen Up! Now With Four Doors!

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

After having been more or less luckless (Lupo, Fox ..) in the minicar category, Volkswagen appears to have finally found a winner with its autocorrect-busting Up! In Germany, the two-door city car immediately took first place in its class. In December, the Up! sold nearly the same as the former class champs Renault Twingo and Toyota Aygo sold together (see table.) To make backseat drivers more comfortable, Volkswagen introduces a four-door version of the Up!

Sales Germany, Mini Segment, December And Full Year 2011

MINISDecember 2011Total 2011UnitsShareGrowthUnitsShareSegment Total16,2616.7%7.3%177,7445.6%VW UP!3,05818.8%X3,8842.2%RENAULT TWINGO1,82711.2%9.7%21,89712.3%TOYOTA AYGO1,82511.2%76.8%12,1636.8%

Internally, the car is known by its acronym NSF (New Small Family). In May a four letter door NSFW (New Small Family Wagen) will arrive at dealers in Germany. By early summer, four doors will open to all of Europe.

With the four-door up! Volkswagen introduces another data-point car reviewers will have to add to their check list: The “H- point.”

The “H- point” seems to be the new G-spot for small cars, even if Volkswagen describes it in clinical detachment as “the relevant vertex of the angle formed by the seat surface and the backrest.”

The H-point of the four-door up! is 378 mm in the rear, which – so Volkswagen tells us – “is higher than in front (306 mm).”

Let’s assume that’s good.




Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Rochester "better than Vinfast" is a pretty low bar.
  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
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