1988 Volkswagen Cabriolet Base Convertible 2-door 1.8l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Get ready to Camino-ize your fourth-generation VW Jetta with this kit

Inexpensive, small pickup trucks used to be everywhere in the US, whether they were from Japanese brands like Datsun or Toyota, the truly weird Subaru Brat or even from Europe with the Volkswagen Caddy based on the Golf. These days that market has completely disappeared, but if you're willing to pick up some tools to build your own, there's a company out there bringing the Caddy back as a kit for the Jetta.
Mark Smith knows a thing about building a vehicle at home. He has over two decades in the DIY-car business as a co-founder of Local Motors and the company that became Factory Five Racing. His latest venture is Smyth Performance and already offers a mid-engine, VW-based kit called the G3F. His new product, though, started as a fluke. "I just wanted a shop truck," said Smith to Autoblog. He already had a Ford F-450 but found that he was driving around with the bed empty most of the time. The result was a pickup truck based on the fourth-generation Jetta that he dubbed the Ute.
The kit retails for $3,500 and ships in three, big boxes, and it's designed to be built and painted in a weekend. Buyers get fiberglass exterior panels, a fiberglass rear window surround, sliding rear window, an aluminum reinforced bed with a tubular steel subframe, taillights, a fully functional steel tailgate, and other parts. In the end, you get a vehicle with a six-foot bed and a payload of around 700-750 pounds. The Ute maintains all of the factory suspension, fuel tank and emissions equipment and requires just a few cuts in the body to complete. "We did a modern Caddy," admits Smith.

Volkswagen rules out Eos successor

When Volkswagen introduced the Eos back in 2006, hard-top convertibles were all the rage – in North America, in Europe and around the world. But the trend, billed at the time as the best of both worlds, has long since subsided, leading to VW axing the Eos several months ago. And don't count on it getting a successor at some point down the line, either. At the Detroit Auto Show earlier this week, VW R&D chief Heinz-Jakob Neusser told Autocar that the Eos is down for the count. In fact it is "maybe the first model we take out of the market" in a reversal of the momentum that has seen the German automaker expand its lineup incrementally over the past several years – although the Chrysler-built Routan minivan was also canceled around the same time. The place the Eos occupied in VW's North American lineup is largely being taken by the more charismatic Beetle Convertible, and in Europe and other markets by the Golf Cabriolet that's still based on the previous-generation hatchback. The Eos, however, isn't the only hard-top convertible withdrawn from the market in recent years. Tin-top cabrios like the Lexus IS and SC, Cadillac XLR, Chrysler 200, Pontiac G6 and Volvo C70 have all gone the way of the dodo – as have Euro-market coupe-convertibles versions of models like the Ford Focus, Opel Astra, and Peugeot 207. The arrival of the Buick Cascada just goes to show that soft-roofed convertibles have won out, particularly as far as four-seat cabrios are concerned. The one notable exception where folding hard-tops are still gaining traction is among mid-engined exotic supercars like the Ferrari 458 and McLaren 650S, both of which opted for solid folding roofs instead of fabric ones. We've yet to see, however, which approach Lamborghini will take with the Huracan Spyder or Audi will with the next-generation R8, the predecessors of both of which featured fabric roofs.

VW to relax ambitious US sales targets?

The Volkswagen brand sold 407,704 cars last year, a 6.95-percent decline compared to 2012, and it's down a further 8.36 percent through the end of April 2014 compared to this time last year. In order to to put the sales football between its Strategy 2018 goal posts, the brand would need to add 100,000 more sales every year to achieve the lofty 800,000-unit target. Coming to grips with how unreasonable that is, VW US CEO Michael Horn has said, "For now, we have to have realistic targets."
The reasons for the brand's slow-down are imprecise, but lots of folks are throwing lots of reasons around. Last November, VW Group Chairman Ferdinand Piech told Bloomberg, "We understand Europe, we understand China and we understand Brazil, [but] we only understand the US to a certain degree so far." Analysts say the brand hasn't had midsize and compact SUV offerings, especially an overdue retail version of the CrossBlue, and the ones it does have are priced too high for their segments. It "didn't introduce enough new engines, or alternative technologies or model variants" for the Passat and Jetta. It devoted so many resources to China that the US market suffered. It was being outspent two-to-one on advertising by competitors. Its J.D. Power dependability ratings aren't high enough to overcome its past. It "has never really taken the US customer seriously." And so on.
There's still no official admission of defeat concerning the target, but reading between the lines there are some VW execs that appear to accept it won't happen short of some deus ex machina. Still,