Volkswagen considering vans for US market, R400 production

    Photo by Volkswagen

Wolfsburg reportedly at crossroads for Golf R400 high-performance hatch

    Volkswagen is mulling a van in the U.S. market, Automotive News reports. During a product roundtable with Hans-Jakob Neusser, Volkswagen's chief of product development, and Michael Horn, CEO of Volkswagen of America, the two executives revealed that the company was considering introducing one of the two commercial vans to the U.S. to take on the likes of the Mercedes Sprinter, Ford Transit and the Ram Promaster along with their smaller variants.

    The van could either be a next-generation Volkswagen Crafter, produced by Mercedes-Benz in Europe for Volkswagen, or a new 2017 Volkswagen Caddy, which will use the MQB platform that currently underpins the Golf and a number of other small vehicles in Volkswagen's global lineup. The current Caddy has been on sale since 2003, and is due for a complete redesign for the 2017 model year.

   "We’re studying this, and personally I believe we should do something based on the technology which we already have in this market," Horn told Automotive News.

    The next-generation Crafter, a larger commercial van, will be produced at the company's new $1.1 billion euro plant in Wrzesnia, Poland, and will debut in 2016.

  Volkswagen executives also revealed that the company was in the process of deciding on a production version of the Golf R400, a 395-hp development of the seventh-generation hatch which debuted early last year. In concept form, the R400 makes use of the Golf R's turbocharged 2.0-liter direct injection four-cylinder gasoline engine.

  "We are just in front of the decision to do it or not, but I personally think that we have good conditions to do it," Neusser said.

   The R400 concept made an appearance at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November of 2014, though at the time Volkswagen executives didn't discuss its chances for production.