Volkswagen tells enthusiasts not to wait for a mid-engined roadster

By Ronan Glon September 22, 2015

2009 Volkswagen BlueSport Concept — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Putting an end to a long-standing rumor, Volkswagen has announced once and for all that it is not planning on launching a small, driver-focused sports car to take on the Mazda Miata and the Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ twins.

Volkswagen gave us a preview of what its mid-engined sports car could look like when it introduced the experimental BlueSport at the 2009 edition of the Detroit Motor Show (pictured above). The concept instantly generated a surprisingly positive response from potential buyers and enthusiasts alike, and executives seriously looked into giving it the proverbial green light for production. Its development reached a point where the company asked a small team of engineers to secretly build a fully functional prototype for evaluation purposes.

“We have one done, and it looks really good, pretty good. It runs well. It’s a mid-car engine inside,” revealed Heinz-Jakob Neusser in an interview with Australian website Car Advice.

Pictures of the enigmatic prototype have never been released to the public, so what it looks like — and how many styling cues it shares with the BlueSport concept — is anyone’s guess. The project was canned largely because Volkswagen’s bean counters couldn’t make a favorable business case for a low-volume model aimed at a market segment that’s steadily shrinking.

Neusser explains that there were other issues that prevented the roadster from coming to life, notably the fact that Volkswagen isn’t known for making small convertibles, so it likely would have had a difficult time fighting for a share of the segment. Image issues didn’t stop the Wolfsburg-based firm from building the S-Class-fighting Phaeton, but they were serious enough to contribute to the cancellation of the sports car.

The announcement doesn’t mean that Volkswagen is giving up on performance cars altogether. While a standalone model has seemingly been ruled out, executives hint that more sport-focused versions of existing cars are right around the corner. These include a 420-horsepower version of the Golf R, and, possibly, a hot-rodded, R-badged version of the eighth-gen Passat that’s sold exclusively in Europe.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Contributor

Ronan Glon is an American automotive and tech journalist based in southern France. As a long-time contributor to Digital…

Cars

2021 Volkswagen ID.4 AWD first drive review: Gaining traction

A 2021 Volkswagen ID.4 AWD front three quarter view.

Volkswagen launched the 2021 ID.4 electric car earlier this year with an ambitious mission: To take on popular gasoline crossover SUVs like the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4 in a bid to capture the heart of the new-car market. However, the ID.4 was missing one thing.

One of the main reasons buyers choose crossovers over sedans and hatchbacks is the availability of all-wheel drive. At launch, the ID.4 didn’t have that. VW said an all-wheel-drive ID.4 was on the way, though, and now the wait is over.

Cars

Inside the lab teaching Volkswagen’s born-again Bus how to drive itself

volkswagen unveils argo ai powered id buzz ad electric van

Previewed by the heritage-laced ID.Buzz concept, Volkswagen's born-again Bus will arrive in 2022 with a few cool tech tricks up its sleeve. It will be fully electric, it will ride on the MEB architecture already found under the EVs like the ID.3 and the ID.4, and it will spawn an autonomous shuttle scheduled to start carrying passengers in 2025. Argo A.I. is helping Volkswagen teach the Bus how to drive itself, and Digital Trends got an inside look at the project.

Volkswagen unveiled the first ID.Buzz-based prototype on the sidelines of the 2021 Munich auto show. Fully draped in camouflage to mask its final design, the van is fitted with an armada of sensors, radars, cameras, microphones, and lidars that paint a digital picture of the world around it. Argo A.I. — which Volkswagen and Ford jointly own a stake in — argues its technology is highly advanced: its lidar can detect and avoid potholes by scanning the road surface, and it can see objects that are about 1,300 feet away, even if they're dark (like a black car). Powering this hardware requires tremendous computing power, several backup systems, and a mammoth amount of data.

Cars

Volkswagen’s electric ID.Life concept car doubles as a gaming console

Volkswagen ID.Life

One major issue continues to stand in the way of electric cars: Cost. They tend to be more expensive than comparable gasoline-powered vehicles. Volkswagen plans to make EVs relatively affordable in the not-too-distant future, and it unveiled a small, city-friendly concept called ID.Life at this week's 2021 Munich auto show to illustrate what it has in store.

Volkswagen is thinking small: The ID.Life measures 161.6 inches from bumper to bumper, 72.6 inches wide, and 63 inches tall. Put another way, it's a couple of inches longer and narrower than a Hyundai Venue. It's characterized by a pure, simple exterior design and a silhouette that blurs the line between a hatchback and a crossover. Users can remove the roof panel — the design of which can be personalized — to transform the ID.Life into a quasi-convertible.