2003 Volkswagen Eurovan - 52k Miles - With Tow Hitch - Great Condition!!! on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Jay Leno brings a rotary-powered VW Beetle to the garage

It takes something really unique or inventive to pique Jay Leno's interest. His show, Jay Leno's Garage, has featured everything from concours-worthy classics to completely custom, home-built machinery. How do you get Leno to feature one of more than 20 million Beetles on his program? Stick a turbocharged rotary engine under the hood. The Beetle's owner, Mario Markakis, swapped the car's stock flat four-cylinder for the Wankel engine from a 1990 Mazda RX-7 Series 5 Turbo. The engine's 250 horsepower are fed through a reinforced version of the Beetle's stock four-speed transmission. That's about five times the original engine's output. It works well, with the car putting down some impressive times at the drag strip. Markakis did most of the work to the Beetle in his garage. In addition to the engine swap, he's modified the car's brakes, suspension, and interior. Check out the video to hear all the details of this custom Wankel-powered Volkswagen. Related Video: Celebrities TV/Movies Mazda Volkswagen Classics Videos Jay Lenos Garage rotary mazda rx-7

Volkswagen drops "GTi" lawsuit against Suzuki

Way back in 2004, Volkswagen took umbrage with Suzuki being granted permission to use the nameplate "SWIFT GTi" for a performance variant of its small-car offering (2012 equivalent seen here). Now, eight years and surely some very steep legal bills later, VW has finally dropped its claim against Suzuki.
The General Court of the European Union stated, back in March of this year, that Suzuki's GTi registration could not be confused with VW's "Golf GTI." Volkswagen had appealed that ruling, though has now reportedly called off the dogs. In fact, Germany's Die Welt reports that the appeal has been dead for several weeks now.
This news comes amongst continued arbitration acrimony between the two automakers, all revolving around VW's forced divestiture of nearly 20-percent stake it purchased in Suzuki some two years ago.

VW's Winterkorn tells 20,000 staffers of big cost-cutting plans

During a gathering of 20,000 Volkswagen Group employees at company headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany on Wednesday, CEO Martin Winterkorn dropped a bombshell. The boss stated that the automaker isn't operating efficiently enough and admitted the company needs to radically start cutting back to raise its profit margins. To right the ship, Winterkorn has proposed killing off less profitable models and spending less on research and development.
According to Reuters, Winterkorn wants to raise the VW brand's profit margin from about 2.9 percent in 2013 to a target of 6 percent. To make that possible, his plan amounts to increasing cost cutting until Volkswagen reaches about 5 billion euros ($6.7 billion) per year to get things back in order. "Over the short-term, we urgently need more efficiency and higher profit," the CEO said during his speech, according to Reuters.
However, Winterkorn can't make these decisions unilaterally. Volkswagen's works council also has a seat on the supervisory board to represent laborers, and it isn't likely to take the proposed cuts sitting down.