Recently JOE’s Oisín Collins was let loose in the all-new award winning VW up!. Here’s what he had to say about his experience in the compact city car.
The first thing that you notice about the VW up! is the fact that it’s a tad small. At first glance it doesn’t look like it’s built for the average 6 foot, 85kg bloke. It looks more like the David Spade mobile. However, like everything else, looks can be – and in this case are – deceiving.
As soon as you sit into the driver’s seat you feel as though you’re driving something much bigger, something like the Polo or even a Golf at a stretch. But then you catch a glimpse of yourself in a freshly cleaned window and realise that you’re not quite the king of the road that you thought you were.
But that’s the beauty of the up!. It was never designed for a causal drive down the waterfront or for a grand tour of the countryside. It’s a city car and it’s pretty awesome at its job. There’s no real wonder as to why it was voted the World Car of the Year for 2012.
I decided that testing the up!’s speed, acceleration, traction and whatnot would just defeat the purpose of testing a nimble little city car, so the only place for it was the winding streets of Dublin’s city centre. This is where the up! really shows you what it’s made of.
The smooth crisp steering makes the up! navigate the tight corners of town better than Copernicus, and although its stubby size won’t get you major street cred, it certainly makes your driving life a heck of a lot easier.
Imagine trying to drive through the twists and turns of Temple Bar in something as large as a mid sized saloon or MPV crossover. Half a word describes it: ‘mare. However, because the up!’s rear window practically sits on top of the rear passengers, you don’t have to worry about whacking the arse of the car off a wall or a pillar (or a pedestrian) mainly because there is no backend to damage.
Not much junk in the trunk
When you do get the chance to open the car up (or open the car up! in this case, ahem) you’ll notice that its size doesn’t matter too much because this motor is so light that it takes off like a bat out of hell. The 1L, 75hp engine might not sound too impressive to your average petrol head, but it’s perfect for city driving as it has incredibly low fuel consumption and produces only 108g of CO2 per kilometre.
The up! that I drove was the top of the range version named the High up! which is only €1,900 more than the entry level Take up! that retails for €11,745. The High up! is fitted with loads of nifty hideaway compartments and some really cool gadgets.
Gadget Inspector
Without a shadow of a doubt the best bit of kit in the High up! is the two heated front seats. They heat up your posterior and your back nicely, but only if pressure is applied to them so you won’t have to worry about your car setting alight in the middle of the night. However, I will warn you that they’ve omitted something from the safety manual concerning the heated seats. Letting ‘one rip’ on the heated seats is certainly not recommended.
The on-board display can only be described as an on-board media centre. You can chose to plug in your media device that has hands free phone connection, sat nav, MP3/MP4/CD player and loads more, or you can just use the radio controls on the dash – whatever you’re having yourself.
What’s cool about the media centre is the fact that you can hook up your mobile phone via Bluetooth so you can chat to you mates hands free. Once the call is finished, you can listen to whatever music you have preloaded onto your phone (or any MP3 device that has Bluetooth for that matter).
As I was saying above, because the rear of the car is so small it makes driving around tight corners an absolute dream. It also makes parking look like child’s play. You can fit the up! into some really precarious places that most other cars out there wouldn’t even dream of. However, the boot space is a little disappointing. You certainly wouldn’t fit a set of golf clubs in the boot and it might be a bit of a squeeze fitting any more than one suitcase in it.
To sum things up, the Volkswagen up! is a small car and it might not suit someone who has to travel long distances over a long period of time. But it is absolutely perfect for the city bloke who needs a nimble run around to get him from point A to point B with a bit of style and class thrown in on the side.
It would be a great motor for first time drivers and it’s a steal if you take up VW’s current finance offer which sees you paying only €99 euro a month for 36 months. Alternatively, the RRP for the up! is €10,995. You definitely won’t get that much car for that small of a price anywhere else.
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