For a little while, Volkswagen lost its way. But now it’s figuring out, once again, that it is the people’s car, leaving its corporate siblings Audi, Bentley, and Lamborghini to be rich peoples’ cars. That means the Touareg SUV, as good as it might be, is too expensive for the middle-class customers who always turned to VW for affordable German engineering and performance – and for something different that what all the neighbors were driving.

Enter the Volkswagen Concept A, introduced at the 2006 Geneva Motor Show. This vehicle points the way to a small SUV that will arrive in America for the 2008 model year, based on the Golf platform and priced to compete against loaded Honda CR-Vs and stripped BMW X3s. Of course, as a concept car, the VW Concept A is loaded with designer flights of fancy, but industry reports insist that many of this sport-ute’s design cues will translate to the model you’ll actually be able to buy two years from now.