By the late Eighties, performance-car magazines regularly persisted with rumours that Porsche was collaborating with VW with the intention of building a front-wheel-drive coupé. In reality, covert photographers had snapped the Herbert Schäfer-penned VW Corrado on test. It didn’t actually contain any Porsche parts, but it did mark a corporate sea-change. Given VW’s engineering origins there had always been moments of co-operation between the two companies, and as the Audi-engined Porsche 924 was dropped from Porsche showrooms in 1985, a gap opened up for a sub-Porsche über-VW coupé, something more sparkling than the dated Scirocco. Something a generation of yuppies weaned on Golf GTIs might move up to instead of the ubiquitous BMW E30 3 Series.
After the distinctively cheeky character and idiosyncratic mechanicals of the rear-engined aircooled Volkwagens, getting into the firmly-bolstered plaid-clad drivers’ seat of this Golf GTI MkI feels like a total culture shock. Everything is angular, futuristic, hinting at computerised systems and digital precision, created in the same kind of ultra-rational post-oil-crisis idiom that produced things like the Porsche 928 and W126 Mercedes-Benz S-class. Only in-house stylist Herbert Schäfer’s contribution, the gearknob – Schäfer was a keen golfer – hints at any notion of fun. And yet in the Eighties, the Golf GTI would define driving excitement.
It just means ‘People’s Car’, and yet Volkswagen signifies so much more. There’s no shortage of rivals with reliable, cheap utilitarianism at their core, but few have managed to unite counter-culture hippies and surfers with City yuppies and boy racers within their embrace. There’s every chance your first car was a battered Golf – the same thing Prince Michael of Kent uses as a runabout. To investigate this curiously classless appeal, we have gathered six VW icons. There’s the Beetle that began it all, and the Camper that kick-started the ownership cult. The Karmann-Ghia made a glamorous push upmarket, a theme that hit its zenith with the Corrado VR6. And then there’s the Golf GTI, the car that defined the hot hatch. We’ve also included a Lupo GTI, which proved that there was virtue in going back to basics after years of growth. So which will convert us to the cult of VW, and how do you buy your way in? Time to take the wheel and find out.
Clambering aboard this split-window Type 2 Camper – and you really do have to climb up into it, it’s surprisingly high off the ground – the thing that surprises me most is how far removed from the Beetle it is. I know it’s built on that car’s floorplan and shares its engine and gearbox. But it’s testament to the ingenuity of VW’s platform engineering that the thing it reminds me most of is not a car, but the 201 bus to Stamford.
Is this a sports car or just a Beetle in a tuxedo? It’s odd, but no other car in this group – not even the Golf GTI – has quite such a weight of expectation hanging over it quite like the Karmann-Ghia. Given that the Beetle on which it’s based was a Ferdinand Porsche design, and the 356 was created using much of the same thinking and raw materials. Even the Karmann-Ghia’s suspension layout with torsion bars front and rear is similar. Is this sporty coupé and roadster take on the Beetle a decent substitute for a real Porsche? If so, £6k for an average one never looked so cheap.
The Silken Touch Thirty-five years after this very XJR-9 scored Jaguar’s first Le Mans win since the D-type days, we relive the memories – then drive it on track.
Lotus lover Sam Hunt adores his Series 1 Elise, but would he like the range-topping Esprit V8 more? With the keys to one of the last Hethel wedges ever made, he’s about to find out.
The homely setting of Ferry Porsche’s front room provides the backdrop for this informal gathering one evening in March 1974. This was a preliminary discussion on the possibility of cooperating with a car manufacturer in what was then the Soviet Union.
Following years of speculation surrounding its identity, this recently restored 964 has been confirmed by former Porsche factory engineer and legendary works racing driver, Jürgen Barth, as being one of two surviving N/GT prototypes assembled under his watch back in 1990…
Readers’ restoration: Lifelong Fiesta fan, Rob Colton always had the desire to one day own a rare convertible Ford Fiesta XR2 Fly Mk1. Tracking one down would be no easy task — and then the hard work really began.
Ford Heritage: When Rod Tebble found this 1975 Ford Consul 2000L Decor sitting unused in a garage he didn’t expect it to be such an original and unmolested example…
This Thames van project started out as a rotten shell with no interior or running gear. Over the course of nine years, it’s been raised from the ashes and reinvented in period restomod style.
Most P100s were sent to the knacker’s yard years ago. Luckily, Gary York found this tidy example locally, but felt that it needed some Bavarian giddy up…
There are different ways to keep the memory of a beloved deceased person alive. In this case, it is Nils Höltmann from Castrop-Rauxel's 1998 E36 328i that keeps the memory of his best friend Hikmet, who succumbed to cancer, alive.
