This is the next generation VW Santana NF in rendered form

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It will be a sad day for Chinese taxi drivers and low level government ministers all over China when the current mid 90′s Santana is finally killed off, but the good news is that VW are working on a replacement. The new Santana has some big shoes to fill indeed, the Santana is a solid workhorse that has ferried many a passenger from airport to hotel to KTV to meeting to shopping center, if you’ve been to China at some point there’s a good chance you’ve been in a Santana of one generation or another. The Santana came to China via the Shanghai-VW joint venture as the Santana 1000, this evolved into the 2000, and then the 3000. VW obviously dont want to take it to 4000 as four sounds like death, so they are planning to call the new one the Santana NF.

The NF is due to hit the production lines in September 2012 according to reports and will probably be on the market by the years end. The new MQB platform will be under the Santana NF which shows that it is finally riding on a modern platform which will be shared with the Skoda Rapid and also the new Jetta (not to be confused with the new Sagitar, the Jetta is also getting replaced). VW have codenamed the new car the VW253CS, which is very similar to the new Polo sedan’s VW251 codename which shows the two have quite a bit in common.  Power plants will be a mixture of 1.4L and 1.6L engines, also from the Polo/Fabia range. The NF will come in three flavors: Trendline, Comfort, High, and of course Taxi, leaked VW documents indicate that the taxi version will take 19% of the production when it hits the market in Oct 2012.