Volkswagen Up GT the one we want

And Volkswagen is likely to oblige but it's likely to be a GT rather than GTI (then again perhaps not?) It's more than a year now since the Up! made its debut at the Frankfurt motor show.

At the time VW's engineering boss Dr Ulrich Hackenberg promised no less than six spinoff models, including the GT Up! the Up! for fast roads as he described it.

Since then stories have continued to emerge about a more powerful version and Volkswagen has done little to nip them in the bud. In fact, some magazines in the UK are claiming to have already driven a pre-production version of the car. The bog standard Up! gets a 55kW 1.0-litre three cylinder engine.

But the car has obviously been engineered to take more power than this rather conservative figure. The pre-production model, Dr Hackenberg's personal mule, puts out more than 80kW to get things moving. This combined with the car's lightish 880kg kerb weight will produce a much livelier drive.

“Such an engine would offer drivers of the barely 900 kg GT Up! more affordable driving fun than hardly any other vehicle,” Hackenberg said when introducing the car. “This would be very much in the style of the ancestor of the sporty small car the first generation GTI. “When an ‘I’ is added for injection, its identifier refers to the Volkswagen icon. And the GT up! is performing on the same playing field.”

The concept shown at Frankfurt is painted in a sporty pearlescent white. Designers have completely redesigned the front bumper. It looks completely different, with a large, central cooling air intake with a grille in honeycomb look similar to the one used on the Golf GTI. Outside there are two cooling air intakes for the brakes; integrated in these openings are the wing-shaped LED daytime running lights. Prominent on its sides are the painted side sills, black door mirrors and 17-inch alloy wheels with 195 tyres.

A roof edge spoiler generates plenty of down force at the rear axle and powerful exhaust note is generated by a double flow exhaust system with two visible chrome tailpipes one on the left and one on the right. Inside, the GT Up! features an anthracite black interior. Offering a contrast to the anthracite are the centre seat panels with their blue checked pattern and the “paint blue” rings around the air vent nozzles.

Painted in a sophisticated glossy black are the dashboard and upper door trim panels. The black roofliner is coordinated with them. Of the spinoff versions only the Up! itself and electric E Up! have been officially confirmed so far for production, a spokesperson for Volkswagen Australia said. But the spokesperson said the comments by Dr Hackenberg suggest the Up! GT is a strong possibility for production.