A closer look at the Volkswagen Lavida from the Beijing Auto Show

Before we begin, let us clarify that the Volkswagen Lavida we're presenting to you from the Beijing Auto Show floor is specific to China. Volkswagen does not plan to bring this model to India. The Lavida is an entry-level sedan (though as a package it is punching above its weight) similar to the Indigo Manza and Swift Dzire.

After we showed you a few images of the VW Lavida from Beijing, we had a few thousand click throughs and curious image viewing by our readers. To this effect, we're playing out another story on the Lavida today with some more images including interior shots.

The Shanghai-Volkswagen JV is showing two Lavida models, one with a full black interior and another with brown and beige interior at Auto China. The facelifted Lavida sits on the VW Group PQ34 platform (old Octavia platform) and according to auto.163.com, is powered by 1.4TSI and 1.6L NA engines.

The Chinese media refers to it as the junior Passat and you can with no strain see why. The interiors are inspired by the Passat, some of the switchgear is lifted from the Passat parts bin. The headlight and grille assembly, and the tail lights have been designed with inspiration coming from the Passat.

The Lavida is a Class A car which means it measures about 4.5m long. Seeing the images we can report that it has a generous rear seat and wheel arches do not intrude completely into the boot space.

Volkswagen India has a lot of time in its hands to bring a car like the Lavida into India. They may not use the PQ34 to build what we think is a compact sedan, but can look at the forthcoming MQB Platform to do all kinds of top hats.

[Source - Auto.163.com]