Vehicles

Watch the Volkswagen Atlas come together in two minutes

If you’ve never been inside a car factory, you’re missing out on an amazing display of technology – as demonstrated by the Volkswagen Atlas. Earlier this month, the 100,000th Volkswagen Atlas rolled off the production line in Chattanooga, Tenn., a notable milestone for the 3,700 Volkswagen team members who work there. Since production began in late 2016, the largest Volkswagen model ever has found a new home with thousands of American families thanks to its fun-to-drive chassis, huge interior

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Electric

Meet the Volkswagen platform designed to spawn 10 million electric vehicles

It’s not often that you get to see the future of transportation in such nuts-and-bolts detail. But this isn’t just any future vehicle chassis. In German, it’s called the “Modulare E-Antriebs-Baukasten,” which provides the source of its acronym at Volkswagen: MEB. Translated, its name means “modular electric-drive toolkit,” and it’s designed to be the basic building block of the Volkswagen brand’s electric transportation future. The MEB will form the basis of the future anticipated Volk

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Beetle

With the 2019 Volkswagen Beetle Final Edition, we say #ByeByeBeetle

It’s official: The 2019 Volkswagen Beetle will be the last production year of the iconic Volkswagen Beetle, exactly seven decades after it first came to the United States in 1949. But the Beetle will be getting a year-long sendoff, beginning with special Beetle Final Edition models for 2019 and continuing over the next several months. “The loss of the Beetle after three generations, over nearly seven decades, will evoke a host of emotions from the Beetle’s many devoted fans,” said Hinrich

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Community

Five races, five podiums, one championship: Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross in 2018

When Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross launched in 2014, the series was a new experience for many Americans; fast-paced, timed motorsports action on closed courses that mixed pavement and dirt with spectacular jumps and "joker laps." So was the race car, a competition-bred version of the Volkswagen Beetle with nearly 600 hp, all wheel drive and a zero-to-60 mph time faster than most open-wheel race cars. Five years later, Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross and drivers Scott Speed and Tanner Foust ha

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Vehicles

What do you call the game of spotting a VW Beetle?

First: It is the official position of Volkswagen of America that no one should throw or receive a punch (or even a tap for that matter) simply upon seeing a Volkswagen Beetle. Volkswagen does not condone any form of violence, especially over an icon of the peace-and-love era like the Beetle. That said, it is well known that generations of bored American children on the road have invented and handed down a game around the Beetle. But there’s also a lingering debate that has never been sett

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Vehicles

200 MPH and more: Breaking a speed record with a modified 2019 Volkswagen Jetta

All it takes to modify  a sedan to be able to push past 200 mph is to acknowledge its limits – and then find a way to break them without breaking the car itself. That’s where Tom Habrzyk’s talents come to life. “The power levels required to set records are very high,” explains Habrzyk, chief executive officer of THR Manufacturing, “so to get to those power levels from the drivetrain, we have to basically overcome some of the failure points that would inhibit us from safely reaching high speed

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Magazine

The Legendary Rabbit Name Makes a 2019 Comeback

It was fast. It was nimble. It was fun. And it had attitude. The original 1983 Mk1 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI sported red plaid seats, snowflake wheels, and a golf ball shift knob. It helped create a brand new category of sports car; the hot hatch. Now, the Rabbit is back for 2019 as a special edition model — the GTI Rabbit Edition is the first GTI to pay tribute to the Rabbit heritage since the 2003 20th Anniversary vehicle. Here’s why we should all be excited. Enthusiasm builds The GTI has

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Community

Cruising the coast in air-cooled style for Treffen 2018

If you were lucky enough to be driving along the West Coast last month, you might have seen a few more classic Volkswagens than usual, and a couple that you might not have recognized. That was the 2018 edition of the Highway 1 Treffen, the annual 1,700-odd-mile cruise from Canada to Mexico along some of the most beautiful roads in America. This year, dozens of VW Buses, Beetles, Karmann Ghias, Type 412s and other models from Volkswagen’s air-cooled era took part in the caravan. The Volksw

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Community

Capturing the past and present at Wolfsgart 2018

Nestled in the northern beauty of Vermont lies Burlington, a small town hugging the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. For one weekend each summer, this small town becomes the travel spot for Volkswagen enthusiasts around the northeast region.  The attraction: Wolfsgart. Celebrating all varieties of European makes and models, Wolfsgart’s roots trace back to Volkswagen and to this day a large majority of the event is focused on the love of the People’s Car. This year, Volkswagen attended Wol

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Vehicles

Inside one man’s unique collection of 114 Golfs

Josef Juza may not own the world’s largest private collection of Volkswagen Golfs – but with 114 examples, many of them rare and odd, it’s hard to imagine a more passionate fan. Juza, a chimney sweep from Austria, began his collection as part of his job, driving a second-generation, European-spec VW Caddy pickup for work. From there the collection began to grow; a normal Golf for the family, a Cabrio for summer, a GTI for driving fun and even a Golf Country for wintertime, or as Juza call

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Company

Celebrating Ten Years of Volkswagen in Chattanooga

Ten years ago, Volkswagen made it official: It wanted to build one of the world’s most advanced automotive assembly factories in the hills outside Chattanooga, Tennessee. Since then, a series of successful milestones — from the 700,000th Passat to the new expansion for the growing Atlas line — have demonstrated how VW and Chattanooga continue to build a partnership for the future. The initial VW investment of approximately $1 billion in Chattanooga and the commitment to hire 2,000 team mem

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Community

Meet Noor Tagouri, the next generation of storyteller

Anyone who spends time on social media may think the only storytellers that flourish there are the ones with their phones permanently set to selfie mode. To see the opposite, meet Noor Tagouri. The 24-year-old has followed her own path that straddles the worlds of journalism, fashion and activism, from shooting her own documentaries to starting a clothing line that benefits charitable causes. "I knew I wanted to be a storyteller, a journalist, before I knew what that meant," Tagouri sa

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Vehicles

Why your cup holders carry a surprising amount of science

  When Volkswagen calls the 2019 Jetta “all new,” it doesn’t just mean the chassis, the styling or the driver’s assistance technology. Even the cup holders received a rigorous engineering upgrade. America’s thirst for places to store a beverage in their vehicles dates back decades; it was only in the early ‘80s that the first viable cup holders built into a family vehicle appeared.  Today, Americans can’t get enough of them; the 2018 Volkswagen Atlas has 17 cup holders and the new 201

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Motorsports

Why VW’s first electric race car previews the future of EVs

Last week, Volkswagen Motorsport revealed the first all-electric race car in the company’s history. Built  with the goal of setting a new record for the race up Pikes Peak in June, the I.D. R Pikes Peak combines cutting-edge motorsports engineering with Volkswagen’s growing expertise in electric mobility. And while the custom-built race car was designed for one purpose, it also previews the technology that will help make electric vehicles a more mainstream reality. Pikes Peak ranks as the wor

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Vehicles

Driving the first-generation Volkswagen Jetta with its 2019 successor

The 1980 model year was a big one for Volkswagen of America. Known at the time mostly for the Rabbit hatchback, VW brought out four new models that year – the Rabbit convertible, the Rabbit-based Pickup, the then-new Vanagon (including its hip camper variant) and an all-new sedan named after the German word for “jet stream:” the Jetta. It was not many years later that the Jetta became the best-selling German model in America, with more than 3.2 million models sold since. With the new 2019 Jet

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Community

Unleashing the Rrrrr-roar of the Golf Rs at WITW

For one weekend in April each year, the small village of Fontana, North Carolina, hosts a gathering of Volkswagen friends and owners casually known as WITW. What ties these cars together, apart from the VW badge, is that their engines all produce a beloved exhaust note. This year I joined over 100 of these special cars for some fun, both in the village and on the famous roads that surround it. The Golf R32 and Golf R cars have been a staple in the VW enthusiast community ever since the first

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