This year, Volkswagen is celebrating 35 years of the iconic Golf GTI. To celebrate the much loved model’s anniversary, Volkswagen has not only launched a special edition anniversary model, but also turned it into a ‘time machine’ and sent it back in time to revisit the brand’s unique history.
The online campaign launches with a film which opens at an event for the Golf GTI Edition 35. The live audience is introduced to the new car by TV presenter and racing driver, Amanda Stretton, and the Golf GTI’s engineers, before witnessing it vanish before their eyes as it travels back in time. Viewers can then follow the journey of the Golf GTI ‘time machine’ through a series of videos on Facebook. The first shows the time travelling car appear at Volkswagen’s German headquarters at Wolfsburg in 1976, where the Golf GTI ‘time travel’ journey begins.
Fans of the Golf GTI can watch the viral film and follow the time travelling Edition 35 as it takes a trip through the decades and visits a range of historic moments, on the Volkswagen UK Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/VolkswagenUK

Our Peeping Tom spy photographers normally catch prototypes while they’re out and about on the street, but sometimes they catch a peek inside automakers’ development studios from the street, snagging shots of test mules before their tires even touch the ground. This is one such case, and though these photos aren’t clear as day, it’s no secret that Audi’s new Q3 crossover, based on the Volkswagen Tiguan, is what’s being prepped behind closed doors (but not behind closed blinds).

We’ve known that Audi would be creating a CUV smaller than the Q5 for quite some time now, and while the baby soft-roader relies heavily on Tiguan underpinnings, we’re sure that the quad-rung crossover will be much more shapely. Here, we see the sloping roofline and more rakish hatch, giving the Q3 a sportier stance than its VW-badged kin. Set to compete head-on with the BMW X1, the Q3 should make its debut sometime in 2011 with the first production models hitting dealers later that year.

Filed under: Etc., Marketing/Advertising, Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Ford, Jeep, Mercedes-Benz, Suzuki, Volkswagen

Porsche once again grabs the top spot (for the sixth time in a row) in the J.D. Power and Associates 2010 Automotive Performance, Execution, and Layout (APEAL) Study. This year’s study asked 76,000 owners 90 days after purchasing their 2010 model-year cars “how gratifying their new vehicle is to own and drive.” The answer, for the first time since 1997, was that the domestic brands were more “appealing” as a whole than the imports (the domestics earned a score of 787 on a 1,000-point scale - 13 points greater than the imports).

When it comes down to specific awards (as shown in the segment-level graphics), Ford leads with five. The automaker earned one each for the Expedition, Explorer Sport Trac, Flex, Fusion and Taurus. Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen each garner two awards. The Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Avalanche, both segment leaders, are the only two models that ranked highest in the 2010 APEAL study and in the 2010 Initial Quality Study (IQS) announced in June. Suzuki is credited with the greatest improvement this year, while Jeep drops one slot from last year’s 2009 APEAL Study and falls to the bottom of the list for 2010. Check out the gallery for the graphics, and read the full press release after the break.

[Source: JDPower.com]

Continue reading Domestics surpass imports as a whole in 2010 J.D. Power APEAL study

Domestics surpass imports as a whole in 2010 J.D. Power APEAL study originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 15 Jul 2025 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Europe, Government/Legal, Audi

He may look like a harmless old man now, but according to The Sun, to suggest that Klaus Carel Faber has some skeletons in his closet would be a gross understatement. During the Second World War, Faber volunteer for the SS and acted as a Gestapo executioner in the same Dutch concentration camp that held diary author Anne Frank prior to her deportation to Auschwitz.

Following the war he was convicted on 22 counts of murder, and though the actual death toll was estimated much higher, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Five years later, he and six other war criminals escaped prison in Holland and made their way to Germany. Faber was given a hero’s welcome and went on to work for Audi, driving a Volkswagen Golf and living out his life in peace in the seat of the company’s headquarters in Ingolstadt.

The fifth most wanted Nazi war criminal, Faber apparently remains protected by the only law enacted by Adolf Hitler still on the books. Under the “Fuhrer’s Law”, he was naturalized a German citizen as a foreign volunteer for the SS, and subsequently remains immune to extradition under German law. Unbelievably, rather than prosecute him locally for his heinous crimes, German prosecutors classified Faber’s genocide as manslaughter, for which the statute of limitations - unlike murder, for which there isn’t one - has long since expired.

[Source: The Sun via USA Today]

Report: Former Audi employee convicted Nazi war criminal originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 08 Jul 2025 08:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Crossover, Audi, Rumormill