What works high must come down as Volkswagen has announced it is no longer offering its smallest hot hatchback. In an interview with the Dutch edition of top gear Magazine, a spokesman for the Wolfsburg car manufacturer announced the up! GTI can no longer be ordered. The message comes shortly afterwards car car reported that the resolute machine was withdrawn from Britain. The sad reality is that VW is discontinuing the small performance car altogether.
Production isn’t over yet as the German brand has a backlog of orders to work through, but the up! GTI can no longer be configured. If you hurry and depending on where you live there might be some in stock. The decision only affects the sporty derivative as a regular model and the purely electric e-up! stay on sale. As a reminder, the latter had a break before return to the lineup about a year ago as a cheaper alternative to the ID.3.
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Conceived as a spiritual successor to the original Golf GTI, the A-segment Hot Hatch had a supercharged three-cylinder 1.0-liter engine with 115 horsepower and 200 Newton-meters (147 pound-feet) of torque. It doesn’t sound like much, but the up! The GTI weighed just 1,070 kilograms (2,358 pounds) and accelerated from 0 to 100 km/h in a decent 8.8 seconds before hitting its top speed of 196 km/h.
The smallest of the GTI models, offered in both three and five-door versions, it competed in a rare segment. Other small cars with sporty ambitions that come to mind are the Renault Twingo GT and the Suzuki Swift Sport. A direct successor is not planned, as VW will use the up! later that decade with a small electric carprobably marked as ID.1 or ID.2.
The future does not look particularly rosy for the Polo GTI either, as VW boss Thomas Schäfer recently said that the strict Euro 7 regulations could prevent this Small car too expensive.
