HANOVER, GERMANY (dpa) – Volkswagen’s striking Microbus revival study, which attracted a lot of admiring glances as a concept at the Detroit and Frankfurt car shows, has a good chance of going into series production in the coming year.
Europe’s biggest carmaker is currently well into a feasibility study on whether to press ahead with the bus, according to a top official within the company and local Lower Saxony state premier Sigmar Gabriel.
“We have never been so close to creating 1,500 new jobs,” said Guenther Lenz who heads VW’s influential worker’s consultative council. He reckons VW bosses will announce a firm decision by spring 2002 and hopes the firm’s main van-making plant in Hanover will benefit.
Premier Gabriel said he had been told by VW that customer research showed a potential strong demand for the new leisure vehicle which is aimed primarily at the lucrative U.S. market. There has been no official word from VW on whether the Microbus is destined for the showrooms.
The first VW Samba van, or Microbus as it became known in the U.S., was an iconic 1960s vehicle that became a favourite with the peaceloving hippie generation. The Microbus came to represent the epitome of freedom on wheels – and for many people it still does.
The new Microbus is a blend of old and new. It manages to retain the large wheels and short overhangs of the original while adopting modern technology and multifunctional equipment.
Motive power of the design study is a 3.2 litre V6 engine harnessed to a five-speed automatic – a far cry from the primitive air-cooled flat four-cyllinder engines of the first generation.
The dominant VW motif at the front of the curvaceous bus framed by ultramodern Xenon headlights – is a deliberate throwback to the legendary van. The front view suggests what VW calls “the desired degree of ambivalence in its character.”
The design study shares a lot of versatile features with the standard Multivan in the VW range. The Microbus has sliding and rotating seats and be adapted to carry bicycles or fitted with an office of kitchen module. Above all, its is very roomy inside.
VW has said it plans to invest more than four billion German marks (1.81 billion dollars) in its commercial vehicle operation, 1.2 billion of which would be spent in the main van plant in Hanover. The plant currently turns out the standard Multivan and VW bus variants.
