Goodbye up! Volkswagen has discontinued its most budget model

Volkswagen subcompact hatchback up! entered the market exactly 12 years ago, it replaced the Volkswagen Fox and had clones in the form of the already discontinued Seat Mii and Skoda Citigo.

The last time we talked about Volkswagen up! at the beginning of last year, when the electric version of the e-up! returned to the market after a short technical break, and today the British magazine Autocar reported that the last copy of the up! rolled off the assembly line of the VW plant in Bratislava (Slovakia). — thus the entire family was sent into retirement without an heir. New up! Volkswagen has no plans, but there will be a budget electric car ID.1, which will occupy the e-up! niche, it will hit the market in the second half of this decade.

From the UK website Volkswagen hatchback up! has already disappeared, but at the time of our publication it was still on its native German website, but the configurator for it no longer worked: the basic petrol version with a 1.0 TSI petrol engine (90 hp) cost from 14,555 euros, electric e-up ! — from 29,995 euros, 115-horsepower sports up! GTI — from 20,330 euros, while Autocar claims that the GTI version was discontinued in January due to too long a queue — no one else offers hot hatches for that kind of money anymore.

From January to August of this year, Volkswagen sales are up! In Europe, according to the JATO Dynamics agency, there were 23,007 units, which is 18% less than what was sold during the same period last year. Now the most affordable model in the European Volkswagen line is the Polo hatchback; it costs in Germany from 21,590 euros for the basic version with an 80-horsepower naturally aspirated petrol engine and a 5-speed manual transmission.

It is curious that the future of the VW Polo, as well as the related Skoda Fabia, is also under threat due to the promising Euro 7 environmental standards that are about to come into force into force in 2025: if these standards are not relaxed, then it will simply be unprofitable for the German automaker to produce cheap “hydrocarbon” cars. The direct electric analogue of the Polo in the B-class will be the Volkswagen ID.2 hatchback — it will hit the market in 2025.