VW Bluesport may be canned
* VW estimate it would need 50,000 global sales
* Cars from Audi and Porsche also threatened
The VW Bluesport roadster may not get built because customer demand wont be strong enough, company R&D boss Ulrich Hackenberg revealed to What Car?.
'At the moment, there's no official release for the project,' he said. 'We are fighting for it as it fits with the VW brand, but we need demand and volume and we need dealers to get behind it.'
Hackenberg revealed that the mid-engined roadster, a rival for the Mazda MX-5 and first shown at the Detroit motor show in 2009, would need to sell 50,000 cars globally in order to make economic sense and current projections dont meet those targets.
He also denied that the company would bring the Bluesport to market in a more cost-effective way by making it front-engined, and possibly front-wheel drive. 'Mid-engined is better for emotional and design reasons and that's the only way to do it,' he revealed.
VW's possible canning of the Bluesport production car also calls into question other VW Group projects using similar architecture. Porsches baby Boxster and an Audi R4 were both believed to be in the pipeline. Inside sources at Porsche indicate that a baby Boxster isnt favoured by everyone internally and that could threaten the small Audi sportscar, too.
