Volkswagen up! Showroom

Volkswagen up!

$ 13,990 - $ 14,990* MRLP

Latest Volkswagen up! ratings breakdown

8.0

Performance
7.0
Safety Technology
-
Ride Quality
-
Infotainment & Connectivity
-
Handling & Dynamics
-
Energy Efficiency
-
Driver Technology
8.0
Value for Money
8.0
Interior Comfort & Packaging
7.0
Fit for Purpose
-
Volkswagen Up! Review
Review | 18 Sep 2012

8.0

The Volkswagen Up! has finally arrived in Australia with a starting price of $13,990.
City car comparison: Fiat 500 v Mitsubishi Mirage v Nissan Micra v Volkswagen Up!
Review | 25 Oct 2013
It's the battle of baby hatchbacks, as four sub-$14,000 options have their mettle tested
New car review: Volkswagen Up
Review | 16 Nov 2012
The small-car market now has a new player with some big ambitions.
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What goes Up must come down: Volkswagen axes its smallest car in Europe
news | 11 Oct 2023
Volkswagen has reportedly ended production of its pint-sized Up hatchback overseas, almost a decade after it departed Australian showrooms.
2013/14 Volkswagen Up! added to Takata recall
news | 19 Feb 2019
It's not around anymore, but the little Volkswagen has joined the ever-expanding Takata recall. There aren't too many cars caught up, given it never sold in huge numbers.
Mk2 Golf GTI vs Up! GTI drag race - video
news | 15 Sep 2018
Which compact Volkswagen performance car wins?
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Volkswagen Up! R-Line revealed for Europe
New Models | 10 Sep 2018
German brand's smallest family member gets sporty design package for those who want some extra show without the extra go.
2013 Volkswagen Up! review
Owner Review | 20 Jul 2019
The Volkswagen Up! I've seen these three words spark many an argument in the comments section of many an article on this site. It seems that some readers are in love with this bundle of joy on 4 wheels. They love it's diminutive stature, they obsess about how it's modest power means you can drive it harder and that makes it more fun, not to mention it's the most economical way of moving about. The Up! fan club insist that the simplest, lightest, cheapest, smallest, slowest VW is in fact the best VW. On the other side of the arguments are those who look at the diminutive People's Car and despise it. "Why can't it have more power?", "Where are the creature comforts?", "What's wrong with an automatic?". These are some of the most common questions raised. And all of them valid too. However, for myself, I'm an Up! evangelist. I love this car. When I bought my Up! just before Christmas 2015, my wife insisted that whatever we bought needed to have 4 doors, and be cheap to buy and run. Aside from that, I had free reign to choose whatever I wished. I spent many hour trawling through car adverts looking for something that would meet her requirements, but still be fun for me. I found that with the Up!. If you're unfamiliar with the car, it's a 4 door, 4 seat (there's really no room for a center rear seat), VW with similar physical dimensions to a Fiat 500 or a Kia Picanto. It has a 3 cylinder, 1.0L, N/A engine producing a dizzying 55KW and 95Nm of Torque. Mated to a 5 speed manual gearbox (nope, you can't have an auto). The small size and small engine means that it's also very light: weighing in at approximately 930kgs. Which means the minimalist power plant under the bonnet is good for 0-100 in about 13 seconds. Although that will go up considerably depending on how many passengers you're carrying, or even what you had for breakfast this morning. This means, the car is slow. However, and this is difficult to explain, it doesn't FEEL slow (unless you're trying to get in front of someone at the lights, then it feels slow). When you're in the driver's seat, there's an energy and eagerness about the Up! which makes you believe that it wants to go faster. I know it sounds a bit ethereal, but there's something about the driving experience that makes it fun. The Up! seems to somehow want you to enjoy the drive; Yes it's slow, but it's fun. The upside of the small engine in a featherweight car is that you can expect some very low numbers in your L/100kms column. The fuel tank (like everything else in the car) is small, only 35L capacity, but you can expect well over 600kms no matter how hard you thrash the little engine. My wife and I were even able to hit over 800kms on a couple of occasions. As far as technology goes, the Up! is simple, but functional. There's just enough to get you by, nothing fancy, but we didn't find ourselves saying "Gee, I wish we had this," The aircon is good, keeps us cool even in Queensland summers. There's factory fitted sat-nav, which works fine, although we tended to prefer bluetoothing our phones and utilising Google Maps. There are also a couple of functions which try to gamify economy driving, giving you graphs and goals to keep your rev's low and your efficiency high. We don't use these features, but it's nice to know they're there. There is ABS and AEB, which is quite impressive in such a simple car. VW claims that if you're travelling at 30km/h or less, the AEB will bring you to a full stop before you crash. Thankfully, I haven't needed to test this feature, however I can confirm that the ABS works very well. The Up! also comes with traction control and hill start assist. Traction control is always on, however there is so little torque that it rarely needs to interfere on a dry road. The hill start assist is fantastic, It will hold you stationary on any gradient for several seconds so that you can pull away cleanly. It's difficult to talk about the Up! without personifying it. The car has so much charisma and spirit when you drive it, that you find yourself thinking of it more like a pet or a child than a vehicle. I bring this up now, to help explain this: the little VW isn't comfortable on a highway. It's not like it struggles to get up to speed, or feels like it's going to fall apart or anything like that. It just feels slightly out of it's depth; It's like someone who can swim, but isn't great at it. Sure, they can do a lap or two of the pool, and they have fun splashing around with mates, but it doesn't take long before they get tired and need to hold onto the side for a rest. The Up! feels like this on the highway. It can definitely handle the speeds and the traffic, but it's also noticeably out of it's element. You can do a long journey in it, my wife and I have taken the Up! on a couple of road trips (Brisbane to Stanthorpe and Brisbane to Dorrigo), but after a couple of hours at highway speeds you start to notice: the car isn't taking this in it's stride somehow. It's not struggling, it doesn't feel dangerous, just somehow you can tell that the Up! would prefer to be doing something else. As for reliability, in the three and a bit years that we've owned the car, it hasn't put a foot wrong. We've kept it serviced, and looked after it well, but the only thing that's gone wrong with our Up!, is that it lost a wheel cover on a dirt road while we were travelling to the Bunya Mountains for our anniversary last year. I would also like to give a shout-out to VW for their handling of the Takata airbag recall. Our Up! was subject to the recall, and VW were very proactive in contacting us and responsive to our questions. The actual replacement took a little over 90 minutes one Saturday morning. The VW Up!. A small, efficient, fun car that I absolutely love. It's hard to explain why exactly, but it has such a great personality, so much eagerness that I can't help it.
2012 Volkswagen Up! review
Owner Review | 30 Jul 2018
Why an up!? Well, a house purchase and renovation necessitated a cheap commuter. I was initially intent on a 500 or Panda with the emotive Twinair engine, but I couldn’t go past the up! at the prices they were being offered. And yes, I will use the exclamation mark if I want to, if only to make our pro_cee'd GT feel better about their automotive punctuation. (Maybe it's something to do with Slovakian produced cars?) My particular up! was produced in Sep 2012, and complied in Australia shortly thereafter. It then seems to have sat like poison at a VW dealer in a regional town for about nine months. Completely standard save for metallic paint and the “Maps & More” unit which added GPS, Bluetooth phone and audio streaming and some trip computer functions. Outside, the up! looks pretty smart in black, although it does hide some of the nicer design touches like the smiley grille and the black glass tailgate which stand out on brighter colours. Unfortunately VW Australia specced all Australian up!s with the black dashboard, which means the body colour door caps in any other colour don’t match. My OCD would struggle with that. Ultimately, the up! strikes a nice balance between typical German strait-jacket restraint and the flair and ‘fun’ this segment usually expects. Inside, the up! is pretty basic – no soft touch plastics here – but ultimately very functional. Clear instruments, big buttons and switches and well chosen materials. The ‘tombstone’ style seats with integrated headrests are thin but surprisingly comfortable, and the tall body and large range of adjustment means even Scott Collie could get comfortable. More hard wearing seats in the back with 2x ISOFIX anchors (yep, I used them!) and the famous pop-out windows. A lot of criticism was directed at the lack of face level vents in the middle of the dash of the up! but to be fair, the vents are big and the car is small. The HVAC works better than in the equivalent Fiat anyway. The boot is… small, but with its clever removable false floor can be made quite deep to store bigger objects, or create a level floor with the folded rear seats. The Maps & More unit is not much more than adequate, with low resolution, occasional crashes and a very optimistic GPS which throws out some weird routes. Also, with newer phones it would happily call out, but incoming calls would not always play through the car. Disappointingly, support for M&M has now ceased as Navigon went bust – so the maps are stuck in 2012 and updates (up!dates?) to support newer phones will not be forthcoming. Alright, let’s drive. The naturally aspirated triple dominates the driving experience. At a bee’s appendage under 1.0L in capacity, it’s a bit short on torque (95nm from 3000rpm) and needs revs on board to do its best work. No direct injection, turbocharging or DSG here – and all the better for it. With revs come noise, but what a charming noise it is, described by some as recalling the sound of an old 911. At 880kg, it would be unfair to say it feels underpowered, but you get well acquainted with the easy clutch and 5 speed gearbox in order to maintain progress. With a wheel at each corner and the low weight, the up! can be great fun to pedal – to a point. The steering is pretty light and doesn’t provide a heap of feedback, and the default setting of the chassis is push understeer, but the basics are sound and there is an honesty to the way it drives. Even more appreciated is that the damping, 55 section tyres and decent suspension travel work together so that both smaller imperfections and larger bumps are dealt with in a manner you’d expect from cars in the class, if not two classes above. I don’t say that lightly – the up! really does have an outstanding setup which belies its low cost. I love Italian cars, but drive a Panda and an up! back to back and the difference is stark. The Panda feels bouncy and a little uncouth, while the up! feels all grown up and quite refined in comparison. In many ways it reminded me of my first car - a '69 Mini with Hydrolastic suspension which also managed to feel bigger than it was while still being light, fun and frugal. Alright, let’s tie things up! with ownership. After 15000kms, I averaged 5.7l/100 with a 70:30 highway city mix. I probably could have lowered that further, but the nature of that revvy engine begs you to work it hard. The AEB sensor on the windscreen stopped working due to the sealant around the sensor peeling off, but VWA surprisingly replaced the entire windscreen and sealant outside of warranty free of charge. The car had a new clutch at about 50000kms before I bought it. I wonder if previous owners may have used poor clutch technique to try and overcome the power deficit. The clutch release bearing was a bit noisy for the entirety of my ownership. And that’s it! Without any of the stuff that usually fails on Volkswagens, I have no doubt the 1200 or so up!s that made it to Australia will be running around for a while to come. I've even seen one with a canoe on the roof! All good things come to an end, I get bored easily and I also just wanted some more power. But the best part was, it sold in 3 days for the same price I paid 12 months earlier. Overall, I reckon the up! is in some ways the best Volkswagen of the last decade – perhaps the best Volkswagen since the Mk5 GTI. A return to its utilitarian roots, combined with modern refinement and a suggestion of character that is missing in most of VW’s lineup otherwise. Just a shame so few found homes in Oz.
2012 Volkswagen Up! Review
Owner Review | 27 Feb 2016
I purchased my up! in late 2012. There is so much to love about this little VW. The 1.0 litre triple cylinder may be lacking in bottom end torque, but it is keen to rev and pulls the car along sweetly enough with a very pleasant warble from both under the bonnet and tailpipe. The interior remains tight and rattle free. I ordered my up! with the faux leather seats with pin striping, sunroof, chrome detailing, and 15 inch retro looking black lacquered rims. It rides like a much larger car, gobbling up large road imperfections with aplomb despite it's petite dimensions. It is very eager to turn in. The steering feel is great, but it lacks the seat of your stomach thrills I was accustomed to with several Peugeot 306 models I have owned in the past. The gear shift feel is also beautiful. Very slick and quick between the gates. Fuel economy is great. Highway trips get as low as 3.8 litres per hundred clicks. No matter how hard you thrash it , it does not want to drink more than 7 litres per hundred clicks. The standard audio system is above average. I have only had one problem with this car. A heat shield on the exhaust came loose. That was quickly remedied by the dealer. My Dad back on the farm loves this little car, and is considering buying one as his daily run around. In conclusion an amazingly talented little car that deserved more sales than it received.
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2012 Volkswagen Up! Review
Owner Review | 19 May 2014
I bought this up! around 12 months ago. I wanted the least expensive transport my ego could afford. The Fiat 500 Pop hadn't yet fallen to $14k driveaway, and I was underwhelmed by both the Micra and the Mirage. They both seemed like appliances you'd buy from a large discount department store. The up! won me over on first impressions. For such a cheap car, it seemed unusually solid. The doors close with a reassuring 'thud', and whilst the interior is sparse, it feels as though quality materials went into its production. However, the factor that closed the deal was the up!'s "Maps + More" GPS. Not only does it do sat nav, but it also provides multimedia capabilities, Bluetooth connectivity and a detailed trip computer for just $500 - it makes other factory sat nav units look hideously overpriced in comparison. Just over 30,000km later and - perhaps surprisingly - nothing has failed on it yet. Then again, it's a relatively simple naturally aspirated engine coupled to a manual gearbox. Even VW can get this sort of mechanical layout right. That said, I'm not keen to push my luck, so I'll probably dispose of it before the warranty expires. It should be noted that most of those kilometres have been on the highway. The up! is surprisingly refined for such a small car, and other than the slight diesel-like engine note at idle, it doesn't come across as harsh as most 3-pots do under acceleration. Another surprise is the up!'s air conditioning; despite making do with three vents (with the centre air vent being fixed), it performs remarkably well in hot weather. Fuel economy is superb (real life fuel consumption is just on 5 litres per 100km), but then it would want to be. Overtaking needs to be booked several weeks in advance. It's nothing that an extra cylinder or a turbo wouldn't fix ... It's shame the up! didn't have a little more oomph, as the chassis could probably cope with an extra 20kW without raising a sweat. It's a sweet little thing to drive; handling and steering are both much better than a car of this calibre arguably deserves, but it's all the better for it. The ride is as good as it can be given a short wheel base and a wheel in each corner. My only real gripes are with the driver's seat (uncomfortable), equipment levels (ludicrously skimpy) and the name (daft). However, the little up! is good enough for me to ignore these issues. Even though it's in my garage for a good time and not a long time, I'm doing my best to ensure that a good time is had every time I hop in and turn the key.
* ‘MRLP’ is the manufacturer’s recommended list price as provided by our data provider and is subject to change, so is provided to you for indicative purposes only. Please note that MRLP is inclusive of GST, but is exclusive of any options and does not include on-road costs such as registration, CTP, stamp duty and dealer delivery. Where an MRLP is stated as a price range, this reflects the lowest to highest MRLP provided for that model range across the available variants.
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