Volkswagen's Up minicar, a key new model for the company that could eventually see up to 500,000 sales per year in Europe, emerging markets, and possibly the U.S., will be delayed by up to five months, Automotive News Europe reports. That's because VW high-ups (no pun intended) have decided to switch the Up's engine from the rear to the front.

The report said that the delay means that the Up will come to the European market much later than rivals planned by Toyota and Fiat. "Toyota's IQ goes on sale in Europe early next year. The Fiat Topolino launches at the end of 2009. Both will have their engines in the front." VW sources in Wolfsburg, Germany said that the Up's launch had originally been scheduled for 2010, but will now be delayed by three to five months until early 2011 to accommodate the total design change.

VW group CEO Martin Winterkorn confirmed in the article that the company's engineers "favored a rear engine and fought until the end for that solution." Why all the fuss? "To cut development costs, VW's management overruled the engineers, because [fitting the engine up front] allows the Up to share more components with other VW models," and because it's easier to cool a front engine. But a rear-engine layout would have given the Up more passenger space, and would have made it easy to produce hatchback and minivan versions of the car.