VW Singapore’s online booking sale says it offers up to S$20,000 off COE Category B models , and up to S$10k off Cat A models, from now til June 1, 2020

SINGAPORE

Volkswagen Singapore is the latest car dealership here to announce its own online booking system, coupled with a sale to get things rolling.

The new system, which VW calls the #Book YourVW programme, simply point your browser at this URL.

On the ‘sale’ side of things, there’s a little element of curiosity with VW’s ‘Unveil The Price’ campaign – the cars on promotion are shown with their discounted price only partially revealed. Potential buyers simply have to register their interest at the website to reveal the prices in full.

The sale runs from April 23 to June 1, 2020.

How much of a discount are we talking? Volkswagen Singapore said it’s offering up to S$10,000 of Certificate Of Entitlement (COE) Category A models, and up to S$20,000 off Category B models.

The key word here is ‘up to’, so obviously not all models get the full, huge discount, which is the biggest one-time discount we’ve seen in online sales to date.

We became the sacrificial information-giving up lamb for you, and self-registered to take a peek at some, though not all, of the discounts on offer. 

Models on sale include eight models from the current Volkswagen lineup, named below. Click on the links below to read more:

Category A COE
Polo compact hatch
Golf small hatchback
Golf Variant small wagon
Golf SV multi-purpose vehicle (MPV)
Touran small seven-seat MPV (launch news)

Category B COE
Passat big sedan (sponsored story)
Passat Variant big wagon
Touareg large luxury SUV

Given the ‘up to’ qualifier, we expected more popular cars to have less big discounts than more niche models, and having registered to peek at some of the prices ourselves, we were mostly correct.

VW is offering a whole ten grand off the Polo 1.4 TSI Comfortline model, which means it now costs S$79,900 with COE.

We think that’s well worth the money because the Polo offers plenty of tech: While it lacks the fancy active information display (virtual instrument panel), the improved sound system, and trim upgrades of the upper-grade Beats model, it still has dual-zone AC, an 8.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

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The big discount is because compact hatches are slightly less popular these days – which is why both VW and Toyota are launching compact SUVs of their own – and typical compact hatch buyers go for less expensive mainstream models. Ten big ones off bring the Polo well into that price category though and makes it only S$4k more than the mid-range Honda Jazz 1.3 LX.

For VW’s most popular model, the Golf, there isn’t as much of a discount for the regular hatchback, only S$2,000, but the Variant wagon version gains the same S$10k discount as the Polo – again the catch here is that Variants aren’t as popular here in Singapore. We’re not sure why, because it adds a lot more space for not a lot more cash – see our review of the 1.4 Variant R-Line for more. 

Given that, we suspected the Variant version of the Passat large sedan would see the maximum discount, and that also proved to be true: The Passat Variant 2.0 R-Line is S$149,900 with COE after discount. Keep in mind this is the more powerful 2.0-litre model with 220hp, so it’s not your Dad’s station wagon, and we even judge it well able to match cars like the BMW 3 Series and Mercedes-Benz C-Class. 

https://www.carbuyer.com.sg/test-drives/volkswagen-passat-variant-2-0-tsi-r-line-review-vari-want/

Volkswagen isn’t the first to join the online sales frenzy for cars, and now that the circuit breaker is extended to June 1, it surely won’t be the last. Kia offered up to S$16k off its Cerato sedan in its flash sale, while Toyota touted some attractive deals in its own online sale as well. 

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