THE sporty version of Volkswagen's up! city car will be priced from £13,750 when it arrives in the UK in the next few weeks.

The up! GTI is powered by a turbocharged 1.0-litre three cylinder engine boosted to 115ps giving it lively performance of 0 to 60 acceleration in 8.8 seconds, topping out at 122mph.

Fuel economy is rated at 58.9mpg with emissions of 110g/km.

In true GTI fashion, VW's baby is fitted with sports suspension and sits 15mm lower than the standard model.

The up! GTI will be available in three and five door body styles with the latter costing from £14,150 and both are fitted with six speed manual transmissions.

Like other GTI models in the VW stable, the up! is kitted out with Jakara red checked cloth upholstery and also features a small honeycomb front grille, darkened side windows at the rear and red brake callipers.

As well as GTI badging the car also has red trim strips front and rear, 17-inch alloy wheels, a chrome tipped exhaust and sporty twin side stripes that recall the styling of the original ‘70s Golf hot hatch.

Paint colours are also reminiscent of the Golf that started it all with pure white, red, dark silver metallic and black pearl available.

The up! GTI will be one of the first Volkswagen cars to launch with a close-coupled petrol particulate filter which VW claims reduces particulate output by up to 95 per cent.

After flowing through the turbocharger, the exhaust gas gets fed directly into the particulate filter, which, with a special coating, works in parallel as a regular catalytic converter to keep emissions down.