The Up! supermini goes on sale in Europe in a few days, but Volkswagen has already been hard at work casting about for ideas to expand beyond the three-door model available at launch. A five-door will go on sale later this year, and VW showed a few Up! concepts last fall at the Frankfurt Motor Show. For Geneva next week, the cute little city car gets four new outfits: Swiss Up!, Winter Up!, X Up!, and Cargo Up!
The Swiss Up! is the red one, notable only in that the seat backs contain leather bands suitable for storing Swiss Army knives (seriously?). If you can’t figure out which one is the Winter Up!, perhaps you need to move further away from the equator. It’s based on the Cross Up! concept from Frankfurt, boasting the same higher ride height and underbody protection. Also based on the Cross Up! is the X Up! – that’s the orange one with the lights on it. Perhaps the most intriguing is the Cargo Up!, which gave up its rear seats in favor of a 49 cubic-foot cargo hold capable of caring a 939-pound payload.
With three of four of these design studies having lifted bodies, it’s pretty safe to say that VW is likely to launch the Cross Up! as the next model in the family after the GT Up! sportster. We’re big fans of this tiny VW, so from where we sit, this is good news – the more models, the merrier. Though we do wish VW would consider offering an Up! on our side of the pond.
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