Skip to main content

Volkswagen Debuts its Smallest Crossover Yet: The T-Cross

The world of crossovers keeps getting smaller and Volkswagen wants in on the shrinking fun. To that end it has introduced its smallest crossover yet, the T-Cross.

While we don’t expect that this will ever be offered for sale in America, it will be sold and build in Europe, China, and South America. And since the small crossover bug is crossing the Atlantic like the Spanish flu, it (and its big sister, the T-Roc) gives us a hint of what we can expect when VW eventually, inevitably offers a crossover that’s smaller than the Tiguan in the US.

“The T-Cross is more than just a City-SUV – it has multiple facets (like me!),” said Cara Delevingne for some reason (my bet is money), “and I love how stylish it is!”

[See image gallery at www.vwvortex.com]

At 13 and a half feet long, the T-Cross is just a little bit longer than a Polo and taller, too, as you might expect. With seating for five, the back seats can slide backward and forwards by 14 cm (~5.5 inches), giving the trunk up to 455 liters of storage (16 cubic feet) or up to 1,280 liters (45 cubic feet) with the seats folded flat.

It also comes with amusingly tiny engines that top out 1.5-liters and roughly 150 hp, but start at 1.0-liters, churning out 90-ish angry hp.

Importantly, though, the T-Cross fits into VW’s SUV offensive. This, along with the T-Roc, the Atlas, and the new Tiguan are all part of VW’s master plan. A plan, it revealed today, that would see roughly 50% of all its sales become SUV sales, which, yeah, that’s what the industry is doing.

Before we get anything as small as this, though, we’re going to get a coupefied Atlas that’s currently known as the Atlas Cross Sport. Following that, VW has plans of producing a similarly ensmallened Tiguan for the North American market. But the rise of sub-compact crossovers (Kicks, HR-V, third example) means that an even smaller CUV will likely become tempting to VW’s North American arm.

The post Volkswagen Debuts its Smallest Crossover Yet: The T-Cross appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2yAh1ZX
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster Review

“Supercars just don’t excite me anymore.” These words, spoken to me over a month ago by another journalist, friend, and (so-called) enthusiast were echoing in my head for far too long, but they’ve finally been drowned out. Drowned out by the wail of a naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12 engine mounted in the middle of the new Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster. My friend’s point is that back in the good old days, there was a crop of supercars that captured the imagination with amazing style, sounds, performance, and more. Today, it seems like everything is capable of supercar performance, with large luxury sedans outdoing some of the best and most dedicated teams of car nuts, while former pillars of automotive excellence are suddenly pumping out family-friendly SUVs. Beyond that, another league of supercars, dubbed hypercars have cropped up with hybrid gas-electric powertrains that make magical things happen quickly, but at the cost of the acoustic drama, visual flair, and engag...

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

    When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier.  The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow.   While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something .  To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it.  Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait.  So with this in mind, we lined our G...

Project Golf SportWagen- Intro

I’ve never really been one for SUVs and crossovers.  The current offerings aren’t the body-on-frame, go-anywhere specialty tools I remember from my youth, and what they lack in capability, they also lack in on-road performance. The current crop isn’t terribly good at handling or being efficient, which in my opinion are major components of our ideal driving experience.  So when it comes to space or utility, I usually look for something of the wagon variety- and it seems that I’m not alone. We hit quite a few shows around the east coast each summer, and we see modified Jetta SportWagens at nearly every event. Even amongst common consumers, these cars are highly sought-after. They don’t depreciate much, making even early Mk 5 2.5 versions expensive in comparison to other Jettas or Golfs of the same vintage. This year, Volkswagen launched their latest SportWagen, which is now billed as a Golf.  In many ways, this latest SportWagen is the best yet and it has certai...