The Club up! is, along with the Street up!, one of two special edition Volkswagen city cars which went on sale in early 2015. Both are based on the VW’s High trim level, which as its name suggests is among the better equipped and more expensive in the range. They are all available only with the more powerful (74bhp) version of the 1.0-litre three-cylinder petrol engine and a five-speed manual gearbox.
There remains, however, an element of customer choice. You can have a three-door Club up! for £11,995 or, like our test car, have five doors for £12,370. These prices make the Club £610 more expensive than the High trim version. For that extra expense you get 16-inch wheels (an inch larger than those on the High), which have very little effect on the up!'s generally pleasant ride. Other features include rear privacy glass, carpet mats, various minor styling upgrades and a unique design of cloth upholstery called Tartan Tonic.
Volkswagen offers just two exterior colours. One is Black Pearl, the other an attractive metallic dark blue called Blueberry which, like Tartan Tonic, is unique to the Club.
It's just three years since the up! entered the market, along with the mechanically identical SEAT Mii and Skoda Citigo. Since then, however, a great many new city cars have been launched, some of them very good, others not so good.
Still though, the up! remains one of the best city cars around. It may not have anything like the amazing turning circle of the rear-engined Renault Twingo and Smart Forfour, but it's easy enough to drive in town and handles well on country roads.
The ride isn't exactly limousine-like, but it would be unfair to expect that in a very short car with an inherent pitching motion. The three-cylinder engine causes the car to vibrate slightly at tick over, though not to the same extent as some other city cars. On the move, the engine is reasonably quiet, and liable to be drowned out by road noise at higher speeds.
Build quality is impressive, and certainly a lot better than that of the up!'s predecessors, the Lupo and Fox. The doors shut with a clunk, not a tinny clang that rings through the structure, as is the case with some modern rivals.
There's also more room in the back than you get in other city cars, though the up! isn't really suitable for carrying four six-foot adults. The 251-litre luggage capacity was class-leading when the car was introduced and is still only three litres away from it. There doesn't seem to be anything like this much space when you open the glass tailgate, but once you've removed the false boot floor you'll see that the load space is quite deep.
What concerns me most about the Club up! is its £12,370 price tag. You could have a Fiesta for that, and although it would be fairly basic and cost more than the up! to run it would have a lot more interior space. My own choice would be one of the VW’s more utilitarian specifications on sale for under £9,000. But I realise that if everyone thought that way there would never be a High up! and certainly no Club up! either.
