Company

Volkswagen drives bigger to fight the COVID-19 outbreak

Across America and around the world, Volkswagen has rolled out several new efforts to help customers and communities fight the coronavirus. Earlier this month, Volkswagen of America and fabrics supplier Faurecia announced a collaborative effort to manufacture Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) items, with the first batch shipped to New York City’s Javits Center and other area hospitals. Working with Volkswagen strategy and logistics, Faurecia was able to quickly convert one of its factor

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Vehicles

On National Road Trip Day, where do you want to go next?

Due to COVID-19, Americans have stayed off the road, but it doesn’t mean the desire to see the world has faded. It’s not too early to dream about where your first road trip might be and Volkswagen wants to hear about your dream trips today on National Road Trip Day. Volkswagen enthusiasts across the country are invited to join the conversation on social media by sharing the destinations and people they’ll visit once we can all hit the open road again. When the green light is given by your loc

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Community

How Volkswagen owners are supporting COVID-19 relief efforts

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, Volkswagen drivers across the nation are pitching in to help their neighbors. Community service is nothing new to Marqese Singleton, and when the pandemic hit his community in early March, he had no plans of slowing down. A parent liaison for Hawthorne Avenue Elementary School in Newark, New Jersey, Singleton has distributed free, fresh vegetables to local families every week for the past three years. On Fridays, he picks up unused produce in his white 2013 Vo

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Lifestyle

#TBT: Ten movies co-starring Volkswagen classics

While many movie theaters remain closed, even as some states start to re-open this month, you can still get your film fix from home. Whether you want to watch something new or revisit an old favorite, these ten movies featuring Volkswagen models are perfect for any mood. The films are available for rent on most streaming services, so make some popcorn, dim the lights and see if you can spot these beloved cars. ‘The Love Bug’ (1968): A down-on-his-luck racecar driver and his mechanic discove

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Community

Dealerships perform acts of kindness during COVID-19 crisis

From organizing senior meal deliveries to leading donation drives, Volkswagen dealerships across the country are doing their part to help find new and inventive ways to support their neighbors during these difficult times. Below are three examples of dealerships driving something bigger in their local communities. Since March, Volkswagen of Bismarck in North Dakota has donated more than $30,000 towards COVID-19 relief efforts in its community. The team has purchased gift cards in $500 chu

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Community

Be inspired from home with help from MoMA

As a partner since 2011 and the lead sponsor of education since 2015, Volkswagen is proud to support the ongoing and expanded educational opportunities at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. While MoMA’s galleries are temporarily closed, the Museum has taken its programs and exhibitions online through #MuseumFromHome, a global initiative that allows the public the rare chance to view the Museum’s exhibitions and partake in an array of programs and activities from home. Wi

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Community

#TBT: Three big brands that started small with a Volkswagen

Many successful companies trace their heritage to a small business that started as a passion project. Surprisingly, some of these now-famous companies credit a Volkswagen model as a key player in the early days of their business. Domino’s Delivery Beetle Brothers Tom and James Monaghan founded Domino’s Pizza in 1960 when they bought a small pizzeria in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The brothers purchased the store for only $900 and decided to keep the original name, DomiNick’s. They were given

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Vehicles

Revealed: The next-generation Volkswagen Golf GTI, with new style and more power

The hot hatch lives on. For more than four decades, the Volkswagen Golf GTI has been the standard for affordable, European-designed performance hatchbacks. Over seven generations, more than 380,000 Americans have taken home a GTI, enjoying the mix of driving enjoyment and everyday utility that few competitors even approach. Now, Volkswagen unveiled the eighth-generation GTI, with more power and more technology than its predecessor that’s relevant to drivers worldwide. Don’t worry: there’s

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Vehicles

#TBT: The ARVW, the most aerodynamic Volkswagen ever built

Aerodynamics play a key role in every modern vehicle. The less drag a vehicle generates when moving through the air, the less energy it consumes and the more quietly it moves. Over the years, automakers have experimented with extreme vehicle shapes to demonstrate the innate relationship between drag and power. Few have been more radical than the Aerodynamic Research Volkswagen of 1980, a single-seat arrow that remains the most aerodynamic vehicle ever built with a VW badge. Sparked by the oi

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Community

A son’s 38-year quest to find and restore his father’s Type 3 fastback

Lynn Pfenning spent 38 years chasing down his father’s beloved 1967 Volkswagen Type 3 fastback and four years restoring it to its original glory. The cousin of the Volkswagen Beetle was a major touchstone of Pfenning’s childhood. His father purchased the Brunswick Blue Type 3 fastback for $2,200 in 1967 after totaling his 1965 Volkswagen Beetle. The car was no match for a cow he hit while traveling home from their grandparents’ house in rural North Dakota. “Growing up, my job every Sat

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Golf GTI

One Rabbit GTI fan’s years-long build of his ultimate custom car

However much you’ve worked on a single vehicle, chances are you haven’t done as much as Derek Spratt did to his 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI. Over the course of seven years, Spratt estimates he spent more than 12,000 hours modifying his GTI and documenting his labor of love in over 180 videos on social media. The videos range from Spratt’s descriptions of basic electrical wiring to installing a modern digital dashboard in a vintage vehicle. His own estimate of his costs: $140,000. And to

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Community

Why Volkswagen SUVs are a great companion for winter driving

Winter is here, and you want a vehicle that can help you weather a storm. Enter the 2020 Atlas and Tiguan. These SUVs carry a variety of passengers and help you navigate changing road conditions with confidence. Check out the features that make Volkswagen SUVs a great companion for your winter adventures. Heated seats and steering wheel: It’s not always practical to drive in gloves, and with an available heated steering wheel, you can ditch them faster. Another way to warm up before the h

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Philanthropy

Helping train the next generation of auto technicians

Volkswagen recognizes the need for vehicles to be in the hands of students to help educate and equip tomorrow’s technicians with the tools necessary for future employment. Over the next few months, Volkswagen will donate 31 Atlas SUVs and diagnostics equipment to trade schools and career centers across the country. The goal? To help address the growing need for trained automotive technicians who understand both the hardware and the increasingly complex software in modern vehicles. With

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Atlas

The 2021 Volkswagen Atlas: Arriving soon with new looks and tech

In three years, more than 170,000 Volkswagen Atlas sport utility vehicles have joined American families as the kids-and-stuff hauler of choice. With up to seven adult-sized seats, 17 cupholders and more cargo room than almost all of its competitors (96.8 cubic feet with second and third-row seats folded, to be exact), the Atlas has proven itself as a compelling family companion. In the past, that might have been good enough for a three-year-old vehicle, but not in today’s market. Instead, Vol

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Special Event

Volkswagen celebrates world debut of mobility research as contributor to exhibit at Guggenheim Museum

In an effort to reframe the global debate about what urbanism means today, Volkswagen experts have teamed up with architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas, and AMO, an internationally acclaimed research and design studio for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), to collaborate on a project that reveals the radical changes and transformations being made to the world’s countryside. This month marks the public opening of the rotunda exhibition, “Countryside, The Future,” at the Guggenheim

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Community

Design the race livery for the Atlas Cross Sport R

This November, Volkswagen plans to bring a new vehicle to the grueling desert races of Baja – the Atlas Cross Sport R race car, a specially-modified 480-hp purpose-built version of the brand’s all-new midsize SUV. Desert racing has always been among the most open and accessible motorsports in the world, and today Volkswagen announced it will be opening up the opportunity to design the race day look of the Atlas Cross Sport R race car. Eligible fans can submit their own original design for the

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Company

Science fiction becomes real as Volkswagen puts quantum computing to work

Chances are, if you didn’t use your smartphone to navigate traffic today, you will soon. Millions of people rely on their navigation apps to not just point them in the right direction, but plot out a route around traffic on the road. These systems all work well, but they’re limited in their ability to map only individual vehicles rather than taking the entire system into account. What if a more powerful computing system could provide navigation that anticipated where traffic was building up a

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Atlas Cross Sport

The Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport adds some American-made style to SUVs

For most households, buying a new car may be the second biggest purchase they ever make behind a house itself. And if you’re going to spend that money, shouldn’t your family vehicle look not just good, but great? That’s the idea behind the newest Volkswagen in America, the 2020 Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport, revealed today in Chattanooga. Meant for those drivers who need five seats in an SUV instead of seven, the Atlas arrives with a strong sense of design that reflects what buyers most want i

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Vehicles

How plaid became part of Volkswagen Golf GTI history

No car has a claim to fame on a day to celebrate all things plaid quite like the Volkswagen Golf GTI – thanks to one woman’s pioneering choices that over the past four decades have become a symbol of driving enthusiasts worldwide. The Volkswagen Golf GTI’s debut in 1976 caused a sensation. Even though only a few details distinguished it visually from the original Golf, Volkswagen—influenced by one of the company’s first female designers—succeeded in transforming the compact car into an af

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Innovation

The next generation of connected cars arrives with Volkswagen Car-Net for model year 2020

For model year 2020, Volkswagen’s Car-Net® relaunches with new technology and a new approach. Many Car-Net features now come standard with the purchase of most 2020 model year vehicles for the first five years of ownership. A new Internet-of-Things architecture can allow future upgrades, like voice commands and package delivery. And via Car-Net, most 2020 Volkswagen models will offer available Wi-Fi capability. “Next generation Car-Net creates the ability for the car to become part of our cus

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Partnerships

Preserving a piece of civil rights history: The Jenkins’ Bus

Most vehicles that sit outside unattended for four decades aren’t destined to ever move again. But this 1966 Volkswagen Type 2 Deluxe Station Wagon isn’t just any Bus – it’s a piece of civil-rights history, and a memory of a family that spent decades working to make the country a better place. Esau and Janie B. Jenkins spent several decades fighting to improve the lives of their neighbors on Johns Island, S.C.  From the 1940s through the early 1970s, the Jenkins family built a network of

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