Volkswagen has announced its roadmap till 2025 at their recently concluded annual meeting in Wolfsburg, Germany. The German conglomerate has also announced its plans for cars in 2017 and there are a couple of cars that are interesting to us in India - the new Polo and the Polo-based sedan – Virtus.
The all-new Polo will go into production in June and there is no word of an India-spec car as yet. But Volkswagen has announced a Polo-based sedan, the Virtus, which will be specifically built for the South American market. This means it will eventually drive down to the Indian subcontinent too. The Virtus will essentially be that long-pending generation upgrade to Volkswagen Vento as the new car will be built on the MQB platform.
The new platform will make sure that the Virtus will be lighter than the Vento and will get improved driving dynamics to a car which is already considered to be one of the best in the segment in the Indian theatre. With the Virtus slated for a global debut in November 2017, it should ideally reach India by end of 2018.
Another car that is slated to spawn off the new Polo is the T-Cross crossover SUV which should ideally be the Ford Ecosport – Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza competitor. While Volkswagen has not set a timeline for it as of now, we can expect it to be built by 2018, ultimately making it to India in 2019.
As of now, the Indian portfolio of Volkswagen consists of the Polo hatchback, the Ameo Compact sedan, the Vento sedan and the Jetta. The German car maker is expected to introduce the Tiguan SUV in the coming months, along with the long-pending VW Passat GTE by the end of this year.
