Ken Gratton•23 Apr 2013
NEWS
Volkswagen Concept BlueSport 'parked'
It's not actually canned yet, but VW's small sportster will have to wait for sports car markets to pick upVolkswagen unveiled its small, mid/rear-engined sports car at the Detroit motor show as long ago as 2009, but the car is yet to enter production. In fact, the decision to place the car in production is yet to be made, says Volkswagen's Dr Ulrich Hackenberg.
Dr Hackenberg, Member of the Board of Management and Executive Vice President of Volkswagen, flew into the country last week on his way to the Shanghai motor show. Here during the local launch of the new Golf, Dr Hackenberg explained that the Concept BlueSport is yet to fall off the twig, despite the market for such a car drying up in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. It's a car apparently in an indefinite holding pattern.
"It's one of my favourite projects," Dr Hackenberg admitted. "I'm still waiting for some [sales] volumes from the market side. We need some volume, some customers. The problem is that the volume itself is quite small, and I need a definite level of volume to make it a business case. Actually the volume is not big enough to make a positive business case.
"The car was under development up to a specific level, so we have 'parked' it now. We are looking to the markets; actually the [outlook] from the markets is not so positive, especially in the countries that like roadsters or convertibles.
"Europe is not the strongest market at the moment, and the strong markets are not convertible markets... China, for example, South America – also not [a convertible market].
"I would like to do it... it would be great for the 'emotionalisation' of the brand."
Dr Hackenberg wasn't specifically questioned as to whether the BlueSport was also hobbled by overcoming Volkswagen's brand image to charge a premium price for the car, but he did refute that Audi had lobbied for the BlueSport platform – reportedly named 'MRS' and to be shared with Audi and Porsche for similar sports car projects.
"Porsche has the Boxster and Müller [Matthias Müller, Porsche AG president and CEO] has said the Boxster has to cost minimum €50,000," Dr Hackenberg said, acknowledging that Porsche is best placed within the Volkswagen Audi Group to make a success of a sports car even smaller than the Boxter and based on the MRS platform. The same can't be said of Audi however.
"Audi has the TT, the TT Roadster, so they are not so willing [to go ahead with BlueSport]," he explained. Given Dr Hackenberg's personal enthusiasm for the car, it seemed odd that the matter had been suspended so long without a definite decision made – until the VW exec offered these words of advice: "It's better to park it... if I bring it to a decision the decision might be negative – so it's better to park it."
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Written byKen Gratton
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