Company

Volkswagen plans to produce EVs in America starting in 2022

The future of personal transportation is electric, and for Volkswagen, building the vehicles of the future means expanding in the United States. Volkswagen announced today it plans to expand its Chattanooga factory to build the next generation of electric vehicles – a investment of about $800 million that anticipates creating about 1,000 jobs in Tennessee and elsewhere in the United States. The Chattanooga plant will become the North American hub for Volkswagen’s all-electric vehicles bui

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Community

Restoring Annie the Beetle for her owner of 50 years and counting

Kathleen Brooks remembers buying her first new car. She was 21 years old in December 1966 when she went to a Volkswagen dealer in Riverside, Calif., and left with a 1967 VW Beetle in ruby red, complete with white vinyl interior, upgraded exhaust and all of 53 horsepower. Total price: $2,300, with a loan of $28.87 per month. Because of her red coat, Kathleen quickly named her car “Annie.” Soon the miles began to accumulate, driving around southern California, from San Francisco to San Dieg

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Community

Volkswagen kicks off with U.S. Soccer, aiming to become America’s preeminent sport

Around the world, more people watch and play soccer than any other sport. In the United States, soccer has steadily gained fans and players over the past few decades; it’s now the third-largest participatory sport in the nation, and its popularity among people under 35 years old is surpassed only by American football. Today, Volkswagen of America announced it was taking a major step to bolster soccer in America by becoming the presenting sponsor of U.S. Soccer for the next four years – su

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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

Volkswagen I.D. BUZZ CARGO: The electric van that could deliver the future

As electric vehicles evolve, there will be a need for them to adapt to all the shapes and sizes of vehicles we have today. No type of vehicle may be more ready for an all-electric future than delivery vans – and Volkswagen has an idea to deliver that future to your neighborhood in the I.D. BUZZ CARGO concept. While it’s based on the I.D. BUZZ concept, the I.D. BUZZ CARGO has several major updates throughout to transform it into an all-electric workhorse with autonomous driving capability. Lon

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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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