Revealed: Volkswagen's new Taigun compact crossover

Volkswagen’s new up! city-car is going up in price, up in height, up in size and up in weight to create the German powerhouse’s smallest SUV.

Europe’s largest car-maker has today used Brazil’s Sao Paolo motor show to unveil its all-new 3.86-metre baby SUV, the Taigun, and its new 1.0-litre three-cylinder turbo engine.

While officially labeled a concept, Volkswagen concepts rarely remain theoretical and almost always move forward.

Our sources expect the four-seat Taigun to find its way into production by mid-2014 and to arrive by 2015 in Australia, where the up! hatchback has just set a new VW price benchmark of $13,990 and where the mid-size Tiguan currently opens the brand’s SUV line-up at $28,490.

As we reported last week, VW is reportedly also believed to be developing another small SUV based on the Polo, to slot between the Taigun and Tiguan, as well as a larger Passat-based sub-Touareg seven-seat SUV aimed at the US as part of a renewed SUV onslaught.

It's not clear exactly where the Taigun will be positioned in Australia, but it should rival a new breed of sub-compact SUVs due here within a year or so including the Holden Trax, Nissan Juke and Ford EcoSport, priced between about $20,000 and $25,000.

Though it’s dubbed an SUV, the Taigun concept sits atop the architecture of the reigning World Car of the Year, the VW up! and arrives in front-wheel drive form only.

Nevertheless, it’s crammed with tantalizing future production technology, not the least of which is the direct-injection, turbocharged version of the 1.0-litre three-cylinder alloy engine in the up! hatch.

The welcome addition of direct fuel-injection allows the engine to deliver 81kW of power from 5000rpm and 175Nm of torque from just 1500rpm. That’s around 50 per cent more power than the 55kW up!, which lacks both direct-injection (it has old-school multi-point fuel-injection) and turbocharging.

Technically, it also moves the little motor beyond the magic 100 horsepower per litre specific output mark once known as the sports engine benchmark.

What’s more, pumping up the power doesn’t seem to hurt its fuel economy, with a combined fuel consumption estimate of 4.7L/100km better that of even the up! (4.9L/100km).

In the real world, its relative richness of torque will almost certainly mean the difference will be greater, given how much time up! drivers spend on full throttle trying to accelerate.

It’s an engine that stretches the top of the EA211 engine family and will also find its way, eventually, into the up! as well as the Polo and bottom-end and hybrid versions of the Golf and Tiguan.

As with the less powerful up! engine, it mates exclusively to a six-speed manual gearbox, though there is enough footwell space for three pedals on both sides of the car and it’s pre-engineered for both left- and right-hand drive.

With only 985kg to carry around, VW claims the Taigun will reach 100km/h in 9.2 seconds and can hit 186km/h (13km/h faster than the up!) on a German autobahn.

The acceleration number compares favourably to the up!, despite picking up 105kg in the transition to an SUV – without the benefit of all-wheel drive.

The Taigun’s chassis architecture remains the same, without troubling the torsion beam rear axle to carry a rear differential.

It’s also longer than the up!, though only by 49mm, and sits on a 2470mm wheelbase. VW claims this gives the Taigun a useful rear seat, even for adults, and indeed it boasts 1036mm of front headroom and 980mm in the rear – numbers that compare with much bigger machinery.

But VW Group design boss Walter da Silva also had VW design head Klaus Bischoff working hard to minimise its overhangs and it has only 708mm of metal in front of the front axle line and 681mm over the rear-end – while passing all foreseeable crash safety regulations.

It’s 1728mm wide, too, and sits 1570mm high – just a fraction taller than a smart fortwo.

VW insists it has off-road capability, thanks to advanced ESC software tweaks and though it won’t go into detail about the Taigun’s ride height, it has fitted the mini-SUV with metal underbody protection at the front to protect the engine and gearbox.

The same goes at the back to protect the fuel tank and any future battery packs for potential hybrid versions. Both the underbody guards blend into their respective bumpers, which are visually linked with the grown-ups of the VW SUV family, the Tiguan and the Touareg.

Unlike the up!, the Taigun gets four-wheel disc brakes, too, as well as a two-piece tailgate, with the top two-thirds of the gate lifting up and the bottom third folding down. The rear window can also be lifted up separately to put things inside without bothering with two tailgates.

The Taigun also boasts typically chunky VW C-pillars, which house a 280-litre boot and that jumps to 987 litres when the rear seats are folded flat. That’s a 29-litre jump from the up! in the standard form and 36 litres more in extended mode.

Its LED lights can be left to their automatic devices or switched on from beside the Taigun’s flat-bottomed, three-spoke, leather-clad steering wheel.

One of the Taigun’s bigger innovations inside the cabin is that it not only displays the air-conditioning system’s temperature from the centre of the actual air-vents, but the temperature can be adjusted from the vents as well.

The infotainment system is compatible with all popular smartphones and tablets, and naturally the car also carries a higher-riding seating position than the up!.

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