Volkswagen's new compact crossover will be called Taos

The upcoming compact crossover from Volkswagen we’ve heard so much about is going to be called Taos, not Tarek or any other previously proposed name. It’s named after a tiny town in New Mexico that is currently home for about 6,000 residents. Volkswagen says this crossover will slot below the Tiguan in size, further expanding the breadth of VW’s crossover lineup.

“It was important to choose a name that really embodied the nature of the car and the town of Taos, New Mexico, was a perfect fit,” says Hein Schafer, Volkswagen of America's senior VP for product marketing and strategy. “It’s a small city that offers big things — from outdoor adventure to arts and design and great cuisine.”

Weirdly enough, there was a VW connection to the town of Taos before this car was named after it. John Muir, author of “How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step procedures for the Compleat Idiot”, lived in Taos. The book is a rite of passage for anyone who owns an old air-cooled VW. That same book was illustrated by artist Peter Aschwanden, who lived nearby. With that knowledge in mind, the name Taos feels much more natural to use.

VW released a few nearly useless teaser images and a quick video alongside this news. We grabbed the most revealing screen grabs from the video and put them in the gallery above, but there isn’t much going on that we can dissect. At this range, we can tell it’s a crossover, but not much else. The LEDs that extend far into the center of the grille remind us of the lights on the Kia Seltos, and the hood’s shape looks rugged and rough like the VW Atlas. We imagine the rest of the car will embody the same theme, especially now that the name suggests a rough-and-tumble nature.

The whole car will be revealed on October 13, so we’re just under a month out from seeing the next new VW model to join the lineup.

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