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VW budget sub-brand stuck in limbo over VW standards, costs

Reports in October 2012 claimed Volkswagen had begun investigating the creation of its own budget brand. This came after having failed to purchase Malaysian car company Proton or produce a meaningful partnership with Suzuki, and after watching Renault-Nissan make piles of euro on Dacia and plot the return of Datsun.
For VW, more important than the question of what to call it was how to build it profitably and in a way that didn't damage the VW brand. According to a report in Autocar, a satisfactory answer still hasn't been found. The hurdle is how to hit "'necessary' quality and safety levels" at the price points needed to make the venture worthwhile. At the time of the 2012 report, German outlet Der Spiegel said VW was trying to get prices down to 6,000 to 8,000 euro ($7,784 to $10,379 US), about two thousand to four thousand euro under the price of the VW Up and in line with the cost of a 6,790-euro Dacia Sandero in Germany.
In March 2013, VW announced, "We want to bring a true budget car to the market in China in the foreseeable future," the most concrete move in that direction after years of planning to make a decision. Working with local Chinese maker FAW, it was predicted that the vehicle in question would appear around 2016, but as of November last year a final vote on it needed to wait until this year because "We are still working on the cost side" and profit possibilities for a car that "has to be durable, it has to be precise, it has to be safe."

Volkswagen Golf R 400 Concept is a 201-mph hot hatch

This, friends, is what happens when you shoehorn 395 horsepower into a Golf. You get a three-door hatch that will happily scurry to 62 miles per hour in 3.9 seconds and on to a top speed of 201 mph. Oh yes, we like you, Golf R 400 Concept.
As we explained in our original post, the R 400 is the long-awaited successor to bonkers Golf creations like the GTI W12 from 2007 and, more recently, the Design Vision GTI. It's powered by the same 2.0-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder found in a number of Volkswagen (and Audi, SEAT and Skoda) products, although it's been heavily massaged to pump out 332 pound-feet of torque along side its amplified horsepower.
Naturally, it's been lowered and now rides on 19-inch wheels. Outside of those changes, though, mums the word on suspension and chassis enhancements. While this is a bummer, the striking looks of the Golf R 400 more than make up for it.

Translogic 168: CES 2015 Roundup

Translogic and the yearly CES glorious gadget geekout go together like digital peanut butter and high-def jelly. At this year's show, surrounded by an egg-shaped Mercedes-Benz concept and the re-introduction of, of all things, the Sony Walkman, we had some fun. Between talking with Volkswagen about its new gesture-control tech and flying some video drones, we squeezed in some time to shred on ZBoard's new electric skateboard. The future is now. Follow Translogic on Twitter and Facebook. Click here to subscribe to Translogic in iTunes. Click here to learn more about our host, Jonathon Buckley.