Vehicles

Top tuners take the Volkswagen Jetta and Arteon up a notch at SEMA

Every fall, hundreds of wild custom vehicles and the creative minds behind them gather at the Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Association show in Las Vegas to show off the latest trends in car modifications on the latest models. While SEMA never fails to draw out the unusual and unexpected, the best in show often demonstrates a flair for making everyday vehicles striking – in ways that might not require access to a paint shop and years of experience. This year, some of the top aftermarket s

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Company

How the Volkswagen Apprenticeship Program makes an impact with jobs

Across the country, more than 530,000 people are chasing the dream of a career through an apprenticeship program. These programs combine on-the-job training with classroom work to help enable tech-focused workers to graduate with in-demand skills – and often, a job offer waiting for them. The Volkswagen Apprenticeship Program began at the Chattanooga plant in 2010, training workers who graduate certified to work in any Volkswagen plant worldwide. To mark National Apprenticeship Week, we asked

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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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Community

Taking the VW van life road to cosplay adventure

For many people, the thought of quitting a job and traveling the United States sounds like a dream. For Justin and Megan Webb, it’s a reality. Last year, the Tennessee couple decided they had nothing to lose by pursuing a passion. They sold almost everything they had, donated what they could, and kept only a box each of sentimental belongings. They then traveled to Boise, Idaho, where they picked up the vehicle they would live in and drive across the country—a 1984 Volkswagen Vanagon West

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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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Company

Exploring the VW and MoMA partnership for art education

At its best, modern art challenges our way of seeing the world around us. It’s that sense of innovation, of searching for new thoughts and ways of thinking, that has led Volkswagen to partner with The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 (MoMA) since 2011. Together, Volkswagen and MoMA have given life to an array of museum exhibitions, educational opportunities and special event programming over the past seven years. Volkswagen became lead sponsor of MoMA Education in 2015, supporting e

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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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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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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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