[NHRABill]

Originally Posted by Franmcm

The lupo and the Fox are two different models. The fox is a little bigger and was bild specially to be cheap. The lupo was bild to be small but is more refined and more expensive.
I dont believe lupo 3l would have sold a lot in USA. In europe the lupo 3l didnt sell that much. For the same price of the lupo 1.2tdi you could buy the 1.4tdi and this one had aircondition, assisted direction, bigger tyres(ususally people relate to bigger security), faster, easier, less expensive to mantain, with electric windows, with better seats.... All that made people buy the 1.4tdi instead of the 1.2tdi. And in Europe we tend to have and appreciate more the efficient cars. In SUV country where bigger is better with low gasoline prices and some allergy to diesel cars (although the lupo is fitted standart to use biodiesel, i just found this reading the instruction manual)... the small and hyper efficient lupo would in my opinion have been a disaster.

I dont think it would have been hard to meet the safety tests, the lupo meets them all here in europe and for the polution dont think it would have benn hard (the lupo has 81g/100Km) but with low selling future maybe it would not worth the costs involved on it, i can easy understant VW reasons.

If you read the article it does not meet North America standards for Safety and America does not have an allergy to diesel they do not meet emissions standards even with the great mileage they get in many cases. There is a large demand for efficient cars motorcycle and scooter sales are skyrocketing but still with the ever increasing standards for safety the cost is too high for companies to make any real profit off of a cheap car.

Large vehicles with all the add on equipment is where they make all of their profits. If you ever compare profit markups on new vehicles a truck will have 3000-4000 dollar profit in it where a compact car will have a 500 to 1000 profit margin for the dealer.

You see many people including myself here trying to find a way to have a multipurpose vehicle get better efficiency because I don't want to buy another dedicated car just for better gas mileage an eco box such as the lupo is great in theory and I wish those 80mpg could meet safety standards and pass emissions hopefully enough people will continue to show a demand to the auto companies that the public wants more efficient cars that burn clean and are safe that they start to make them.