Industry News
Toyota and VW to show new city cars at Frankfurt
4th September 2007
Fiat Group Automobiles could launch a new city car on its Panda/Cinquecento platform to challenge similar models planned by Volkswagen and Toyota which will be shown at next week’s Frankfurt IAA motorshow, Automotive News Europe has reported.
At about 3200mm, the potential Fiat 4-seater microcar would be 300mm shorter than the Panda, and could reach the market in 2009 or 2010 to replace the 3335mm Seicento mini. While this car won’t be shown at Frankfurt, Fiat will show a new 65hp two-cylinder engine for such a car.
The VW show car is based on a new rear wheel drive platform housing two- or three-cylinder engines mounted below the rear seats, which is intended to support versions from VW, Skoda and SEAT for the European, Japanese and possibly U.S. markets, and in basic form, in India and China.
Toyota will present at Frankfurt a production-ready version of the front-wheel drive Endo concept car shown at the 2005 Frankfurt IAA, which reportedly has half the components of a conventional small car.
Automotive News says CSM Worldwide estimates European annual sales of 75,000 to 80,000 for the VW microcar and 55,000 to 60,000 for the Toyota Endo. The paper quotes CSM Worldwide’s London forecast director Mark Fulthorpe describing all three micro-car projects as their manufacturers’ “levers against future emissions legislation in Europe”.
(Automotive News Europe, 3 September)
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