Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport Concept 2019 Review

Volkswagen regularly plays the SUV or pick-up concept game at North American motor shows but it rarely follows them up. The Atlas was different, morphing quickly into a seven-seat production SUV, and the five-seat Atlas Cross Coupe will be different, too.

The Atlas Cross Coupe concept debuted at this year’s New York motor show in March and Volkswagen announced late last month that it would be built, making its showroom debut in North America next year.

It has refused to lock in where the two-row Atlas Cross Coupe could be sent from there, but China and Russia are no-brainers (it shares the Atlas architecture, which means it shares the Chinese-built Teramont’s architecture, too), but there are ambitions further afield for it, including Australia and, maybe, even Europe.

Volkswagen Group Australia, which has just added the seven-seat Tiguan Allspace to its SUV line-up, has confirmed it will bring the new Touareg next April, followed by the all-new pint-size T-Cross late next year. Beyond that, it says it will take either or both the Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport, if they produced in right-hand drive.

But Volkswagen’s latest SUV – which is shorter, wider and lower than the Atlas -- will have to walk before it can run, even though our short drive of the concept on California’s 17 Mile Drive showed there’s promise in it.

The Atlas itself is the biggest vehicle Volkswagen builds on the Golf’s MQB architecture, so shrinking the wheelbase back for the Atlas Cross Sport will help, rather than hinder it.

It will be built on the same production lines as the Atlas and Passat, in Chattanooga, Tennessee (which, indeed, has a train station), and will be built in China (which is where Australia’s Atlas Cross Sport would come from).

Secondly, unlike the Atlas Tanoak pick-up, the potential market for the Atlas Cross Sport isn’t limited to a cluster of low-tech American copycats and some Asian also-rans.

And, most importantly, while the Atlas is practical and flexible and great for families, it’s not exactly dripping with visual sensuality. Anything is going to help, really, to perk it up and chopping a chunk out of the wheelbase and giving it a slick-backed roofline has sure done that job.

The Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport is best thought of as a philosophical cohort of the BMW X6, though at a lower price point, with a more aggressive front-end than its donor car and sportier proportions, too.

It won’t reach showrooms with the concept car’s mechanical layout, with Volkswagen’s electrification chief admitting the three-motor electrified powertrain would have to wait for another generation of Volkswagen machinery.

As it stands, the Atlas Cross Sport mixes a 3.6-litre naturally-aspirated petrol V6 with an electric motor on the rear axle and another one up front.

While the rear one, with 85kW of power and 270Nm of torque, lives in its own little rear-axle world, the 40kW/220Nm front electric motor lives inside the six-speed dual-clutch transmission, helping the 206kW/350Nm V6 to turn the front wheels.

With no mechanical connection between the front and rear axles, all-wheel drive work has to be managed by the software running the rear electric motor.

The ‘Sport’ part of the SUV’s name comes from not just its exterior design, but its ability to run to 100km/h in a claimed 5.7 seconds, along with a claimed 70km (NEDC) range when it’s running as a pure EV.

There’s no official kerb weight, but production versions should be less than 1800kg, without the long 18kWh lithium-ion battery tucked into the unused transmission tunnel.

It’s difficult to tell from the concept car that the production car is only a year away. It’s a hand-built special from the Wolfsburg design centre’s purpose-built facility that’s so secret it’s the only building at Volkswagen headquarters that doesn’t have a number on it.

And you can tell it’s hand built. Unlike the Atlas Tanoak concept, the Atlas Cross Sport feels delicate and fragile, with creaks and groans at every undulation, surfaces that don’t quite fit properly and constant urgings by the Volkswagen handlers to close the doors g-e-n-t-l-y, if you please.

Despite that, the powertrain and cabin are convincing, though only one of them will be seen in showrooms any time in the next six or seven years.

It’s still a prototype development powertrain, which, in reality, would cost far more than Volkswagen could possibly sell an Atlas Cross Sport for, because it has to be priced below the Atlas seven-seater, not above it.

Even so, it’s as interesting as anything else about the car, and at this early stage it’s clear how much potential the layout has for future large Volkswagens in an era when their emissions come under greater scrutiny. It has a real role to play in everything from the Passat to the Touareg in a post-2021 world.

It’s been organised to be able to be driven as either a plug-in hybrid or as a standard series hybrid, where the electrical energy cycles from braking energy are fed into a 2kWh battery and being spent again to provide boost in torque-hungry situations.

Driven like this, the SUV has 231kW of power and can foot it to 100km/h in 6.9 seconds, while both modes top out at 209km/h.

Its all-new cabin design shows five driving modes for the powertrain -- E-mode, hybrid mode, GTE for performance and another mode to hold the battery’s charge so there is plenty of EV range in the city. The fifth mode is for off-road work.

When we trickled off in the E-mode, the Atlas Cross Sport was effectively a rear-driver, with only the rear electric motor doing any work.

Thanks to some fiddles by the Volkswagen engineers to “simulate” a flat battery, the SUV switched across to its hybrid mode, with the rear motor and V6 working in harness.

The GTE mode swings in 670Nm of system torque to make it into a properly quick machine, while the all-wheel drive system is almost always just driving the car on electric power, with the V6 acting as a generator for the rear electric motor.

The trick is that both electric motors act as generators for the first 0.3g of braking force, topping up the batteries as the car slows.

And it does all of this while switching seamlessly and the only time you know the car has turned on the V6 is when you hear it. It’s the weak link in the entire powertrain, with no turbocharger to help its emissions or low-end strength, but it’s cheap and the Americans seem to like it.

Design boss Klaus Bischoff insists the car breaks new ground for Volkswagen SUVs, with a new nose and tail on the Atlas’s more conservative features.

“Thanks to the Atlas Cross Sport we are introducing a high design standard to the full-size SUV category,” he insisted.

It has a cleaner nose outside, with two bars instead of three, with the LED headlights and running lights graduating to become a full-time part of the grille.

There is more muscle in the wheel-arches to accommodate the 22-inch wheels and tyres (err, not production spec).

It’s shorter than the Atlas, by 190mm, to post a 4847mm total length, though its 2030mm width is 31mm wider and its 1736mm height is 42mm lower.

Its 2980m wheelbase is still generous, though, and rear-seat legroom is little different to the Atlas seven-seater.

The interior is the part that will make it into production, marking a major tech departure from the stodgier Atlas.

The console is clean and simple, with a fat-topped gear lever surrounded only by a small dial for the driving modes and switches for the traction control, the GTE mode and the EV mode, plus a silver engine start-stop button.

There are proximity sensors and gesture control for the 10.1-inch multimedia touch-screen, while the instrument cluster is a 12.3-inch high-resolution digital screen.

If this interior makes it into production, it will be a generational step forward from the Atlas. It’s comfortable in both the front and the rear, with easy displays and gesture swiping of different displays that are simple to operate and surprisingly intuitive.

Effectively, our short, low-speed drive taught us only two things: that there is a future for this powertrain set-up and that the rest of the car works.

It will likely arrive in production with a range of 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo petrol and diesel motors, plus the V6 for America and some mild-hybrid boosting from a 48-volt system.

But it’s a striking machine alongside the Atlas and, for most people, that’s going to be enough.

How much does the 2019 Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport cost?
Price: TBC (cheaper than Atlas)
Engine: 3.6-litre V6 petrol,
Output: 206kW/350Nm
Rear e-motor output: 85kW/270Nm
Front e-motor output: 40kW/220Nm
Combined output (PHEV): 265kW/670Nm
Combined output (HEV): 231kW/620Nm
Transmission: Six-speed dual-clutch
Fuel: TBC
CO2: TBC
Safety rating: TBC