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"\n\n What's up? Volkswagen sales \u2014up 38% over last year, through the end of April\u2014that's what. Almost all of VW's diverse range is selling better as the U.S. economy slowly improves (driven in large measure by auto sales), but the 2012 Passat, built at a new multi-billion-dollar plant in Chattanooga, tops the headlines, with sales soaring 21,279.6% in the first four months of the year. That's in part a reflection on how poorly the last-generation Passat was selling in its run-out days. But shifting almost 35,000 Passats in a third of a year still represents an impressive amount of cash in, by any measure, especially when you add to the kitty the proceeds of the 54,000 Jettas and Jetta Sportwagens also sold to American buyers in the same period. \n\n The new Passat is not, we should hasten to add, our favorite VW ever. Frankly, it's been blanded up and dumbed down when compared to its predecessors, in an effort to confront fiercely competitive American, Japanese and Korean manufacturers. All are adept at offering low-priced, full-featured sedans, with a comforting hint of anonymous characterless-ness, for a price\u2014and no more. VW, in step now with its own currency-exchange-hedging, low-wage, non-union American factory, has fully joined the fold.\n\n Accordingly, the once-trim Passat has been bloated for American duty, growing in every direction to conform to the mainstream view that bigger is better, to the point where this Yankee Volkswagen is now among the largest members of its class. Likely just as helpful to its sales prospects, however, are the facts that it's cheaper to buy, relatively speaking, than any Passat before and it's still better to drive\u2014especially in diesel-sipping, turbocharged TDI form\u2014than the equivalent Honda, Hyundai, or Kia offerings, in spite of clear evidence of VW's newfound allegiance to money-saving regress-o-tech (cheaper plastics, less complex suspensions, older engines). No matter, VW\u2014which has committed itself to becoming the world's number-one manufacturer (today it's only third-largest)\u2014is in high recovery mode in America, kicking more sales ass lately than practically anyone besides Hyundai and Kia, who are actually related arms of the same Korean company.\n\n Want to know what else is up? A car that could be bringing even more luster to VW's American sales offensive and reputation burnishing mission, but won't get the chance. We speak of the Up!, a recently introduced, smaller Volkswagen that's already selling briskly in Europe, with a list price starting at 9,850 Euros (just under $13,000 at current exchange rates.)\n\n Right now, the Up! only makes us feel down, because Volkswagen won't sell the cute little thing over here. As much as we dug the 2007 concept car upon which it is based, with its two-cylinder, rear-mounted engine (both since ditched for front-wheel-drive and a one-liter three-cylinder upfront), we might not have felt so bad about its absence. That is, before they had the cruel idea to bring a production Up! to these shores and start lending it to journalists for demonstration purposes, towards what end one may only speculate.\n\n For a local Up! made it possible for us to spend four days last week, driving one in and around New York City. And our instant-read takeaway was: great small car with Olympian city parking ability, incredible economy (55 MPG), perfectly reasonable acceleration and highway performance, amusing handling and, one can't emphasize strongly enough, sufficient room to accommodate four full-sized Americans. Out of sight, out of mind is the old adage. Perhaps this explains the Up's presence in VW's U.S. test fleet, so that it wouldn't remain out of mind, lest we not feel compelled to make the case for it. Someone with a pro-Up! agenda must have thought, How could American journalists not deem it worthy, how could we fail to note that VW ought to sell it here? How, indeed.\n\n Just as the Honda Fit was necessitated by the ever-larger Civic, today's rather large Jetta and Golf have opened space for something smaller. Indeed, so big has the lineup grown that even the company's Polo model (which in the rest of the world fits one size under the Golf) is so big today that there was room for a smaller car beneath it.\n\n The Up! is that car, and it is just the thing we need more of in America, a quality city car that has serious inter-urban potential to go along with its intra-urban chops. It recalls the old, first-series Volkswagen GTI in size and sprightliness, though it is probably faster and almost twice as economical, not to mention safer and less evil at the edge.\n\n VW's decision not to bring Up! to America forces us to recall again that German industry's frequently monolithic view of Americans\u2014that we only like our cars really big on the outside\u2014has too often led it in recent years to forget it they got rich in the first place by selling Americans small cars. Some of us like small cars.\n\n The Mini Cooper, a notable exception, and the Smart Car, to date, a half-hearted mistake but an exception, too, may argue otherwise, but a never-ending procession of ever larger BMWs, Mercedes and Audis strikes the tune to which VW and the rest of the German carmakers seem to have been marching here for some time. Yet companies ignore this part of the market\u2014the often-educated, often affluent people who want really efficient automobiles\u2014at their peril. It's a fascinating surprise to learn that it can carry four despite its small size (somewhat shy of 11 feet long, and weighing a very svelte 2037 lbs), even passing the multiple six-footer test administered to it by GQ with the help of some passing reporters from Consumer Reports.\n\n Americans are king-sized, to be sure, but the popularly repeated myth\u2014that somehow Europe is a completely different land, where there are no large folk and no highways or great distances between cities\u2014is a pure delusion. As delusions go, we Americans' sense of our own exceptionalism is one thing. But it's quite another, rather more embarrassing thing when expressions of this are obeyed by Europeans who've convinced themselves that America's requirements are wildly different than their own. For while cars like the Up! are best suited to urban environments, these do exist in America. You should check one out sometime, VW."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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