Volkswagen Debuts its Smallest Crossover Yet: The T-Cross

The world of crossovers keeps getting smaller and Volkswagen wants in on the shrinking fun. To that end it has introduced its smallest crossover yet, the T-Cross.

While we don’t expect that this will ever be offered for sale in America, it will be sold and build in Europe, China, and South America. And since the small crossover bug is crossing the Atlantic like the Spanish flu, it (and its big sister, the T-Roc) gives us a hint of what we can expect when VW eventually, inevitably offers a crossover that’s smaller than the Tiguan in the US.

“The T-Cross is more than just a City-SUV – it has multiple facets (like me!),” said Cara Delevingne for some reason (my bet is money), “and I love how stylish it is!”

At 13 and a half feet long, the T-Cross is just a little bit longer than a Polo and taller, too, as you might expect. With seating for five, the back seats can slide backward and forwards by 14 cm (~5.5 inches), giving the trunk up to 455 liters of storage (16 cubic feet) or up to 1,280 liters (45 cubic feet) with the seats folded flat.

It also comes with amusingly tiny engines that top out 1.5-liters and roughly 150 hp, but start at 1.0-liters, churning out 90-ish angry hp.

Importantly, though, the T-Cross fits into VW’s SUV offensive. This, along with the T-Roc, the Atlas, and the new Tiguan are all part of VW’s master plan. A plan, it revealed today, that would see roughly 50% of all its sales become SUV sales, which, yeah, that’s what the industry is doing.

Before we get anything as small as this, though, we’re going to get a coupefied Atlas that’s currently known as the Atlas Cross Sport. Following that, VW has plans of producing a similarly ensmallened Tiguan for the North American market. But the rise of sub-compact crossovers (Kicks, HR-V, third example) means that an even smaller CUV will likely become tempting to VW’s North American arm.

Source: Read Full Article