Look Dad! A Golf on stilts! Don’t mock the afflicted, kid. It’s not that poor VW’s fault if it got jacked up like that. Probably some height-obsessed owner’s idea of a wannabe crossover. What? It was sold this way by the manufacturer themselves? It was made in Austria? It’s rare as a jaw-full of hen’s teeth? Well, if Puched, I think I might take have a bit of a Steyr too, then.
Yes, there’s a VW logo on that grille right there, and we are in the unmistakable presence of a Mk2 Golf, but this is obviously not your usual Wolfsburg grocery-getter. It’s more of an Alpine mountain goat with extra black trim.
In Volkswagen-speak, AWD is spelled “Syncro.” The first VW model to don this name was the T3 Transporter in 1984. Turning a regular-wheel-drive car into a lifted 4×4 has become a routine procedure in this day and age, but there was a time when this was a novel concept. I’m talking here strictly speaking of commercially available official/factory-made 4×4 variants, i.e. vehicles that were born as two-wheel-drive and were turned into four-wheel drive, so no Lohner-Porsche, Jeeps or Land Rovers, no racers and no aftermarket Marmon-Herrington type stuff.
Let’s start the story at the very beginning – we’re talking waaaaay back in the ‘50s. It seems that the first regular civilian car to have had an official 4×4 variant was the 1950-57 Renault Prairie, its AWD version (top left) joining the range in 1952. The Soviet GAZ works followed with the M72 (1955-57, top right), essentially a GAZ-69 chassis with a Pobieda body. This was followed by the mechanically unrelated Moskvich 410H saloon and 411H wagon (1958-61, bottom left) – obviously, the USSR’s rudimentary road network called for this type of vehicle. Next came the famous 1959-67 Citroën 2CV Sahara (bottom right): a complete bomb commercially, but quite a technical tour de force with its two flat-twin engines, one per axle.
Subaru started their long-lasting love affair with four-wheel-drive in 1970 with a limited run of FF1 wagons for a Japanese power company, soon to be offered across the 1972 Leone range (top left). Citroën tried again with the Méhari 4×4 (1979-83, top right), now with just the one engine, but failed again to gain traction. The much more successful AMC Eagle (1980-88, bottom right), on the other hand, showed what a wizard Kenosha were with leftovers. Jensen’s FF (1966-71, bottom left) showed all-wheel-drive could potentially work wonders in high-class performance cars, though it took Audi a good decade to turn that idea into a successful reality.
Many (but not all) of the aforementioned vehicles were jointly engineered with a 4×4 specialist, such as Ferguson for Jensen, Jeep for AMC or Herwaythorn for Renault. VW’s predecessor organization, the KdF, also had plenty of 4×4 know-how – as evidenced by the Beetle-based Typ 87, for instance, which is arguably the grand-daddy of all these 4×4-saloon hybrids, though it was only made for military use.
VW therefore had AWD technology pretty much baked in since the beginning and they inherited Auto-Union’s knowhow in the shape of the DKW Munga, as well. The wartime KdF/Porsche stuff sort of went dormant after the war (though Porsche did try to resurrect it), while the Auto-Union technology was utilized to develop the Iltis (1978-88) and, ultimately, the Audi Quattro.
Why didn’t Volkswagen just adapt Audi’s technology to make their Syncro models (except the Audi-based Passat Syncro)? I’m guessing because of VW’s different engine layouts. VW ended up contracting out work on the rear-engined T3 and the transverse front-engined Golf 4×4 conversions. In these particular (transfer) cases, the Steyr-Daimler-Puch conglomerate was the technological partner.
SDP were well-versed in this exercise, having produced their own AWD truck designs since the ‘40s. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, Steyr were busy finding more JVs for their 4×4 technology. This included the G-wagen and the 4-Matic with Daimler-Benz, as well as the Panda 4×4 with Fiat. Both of these tie-ups were very successful: the Mercedes deal is still in force 45 years on, and the Fiat Panda 4×4’s reputation in Alpine regions is unparalleled. The VW Golf Syncro, made in Steyr’s own works in Graz, Austria, was unveiled in 1986.
With absolutely zero distinguishing feature aside from its discreet “Syncro” badges, the AWD Golf was a bit of a flop. When folks are paying over 30% extra for a car, they tend to like to advertise that fact. At least, some people do, and VW gave them nothing to stick out of the crowd. That might be why the regular Golf Syncro only tallied 26k units between 1986 and 1989, when VW hit the pause button. But that was temporary, as they tried a couple of alternate routes.
One was the Quattro / high performance niche, as the 1989-91 Golf Rallye (pictured above) and the G60 Syncro. This would be followed by the VR6 Syncro in the MkIII Golf, so the power solution was a decent one in the long run. The other way was to turn the Golf into a more ostensible off-roader, hence the Golf Country.
VW were thinking of calling it the Montana – that’s how they called it at the Geneva Motor Show when the prototype was shown in early 1989, but in the end, they done went Country. VW didn’t shy away from the whole off-roader bit, slapping a bunch of extra trim on the body, fog lights, bull bar, continental kit and all that good stuff.
Inside, things were more subdued. Rear passengers didn’t get power windows or anything fancy. This was a Golf, after all. But the price was closer to an Audi, so a lot of people winced at the lifted VW proto-crossover and wondered who in their right mind would buy one.
With 98hp from its 1.8 litre engine, the Golf Country had the means to haul itself up an Alpine pass or two, but even there, it faced an uphill struggle. But with competitors like the Fiat Panda, the Lada Niva and the Suzuki Vitara (to name but three of the most dangerous ones), the VW lacked the ruggedness and simplicity that is valued above anything else in mountainous areas.
A special super-deluxe “Chrome” version was added to the range, as well as a slightly cheaper “Allround,” but neither of these two moved the needle very much. After 18 months in production, VW closed the Golf Country chapter rather abruptly, having sold about 7700 units. It was a valiant effort, but the world just wasn’t ready for a Golf on stilts.
Related posts:
Cohort Pic(k) of the Day: VW Golf Country – The German Subaru That Never Made It To The US, by PN
I remember seeing a few of those around and always thought they looked really strange, but somehow I still liked them. But I guess it was a bit too far ahead of time and maybe a bit too extreme-looking for the wider public. In the 90s, cars like Subaru Outback showed the world how to do the cladded up passenger car based AWD crossover in a nicer, more palatable way.
BTW, if I’m not mistaken then the first 4×4 variant of a normal passenger car was the GAZ 61 in 1938. According to Wikipedia, 238 cars were built until 1945. You could argue that it wasn’t commercially available to the general public, but that would apply to any car in 1930s USSR, including the GAZ M1 saloon it was based on (60k of those were built – for use by officials, politicians, state and municipal services, army, secret police, etc).
Around the same time, in the late 30s the Japanese (Kurogane, Mitsubishi… and was there someone else? Ohta, or am I imagining it?) were building some army 4×4 cars that looked like passenger cars, but weren’t actually based on any regular production vehicle.
The KdF wagen’s (Beetle) engine/transmission layout made it quite easy to extend the output shaft of the transmission forward to the front axle for 4WD. This was the big benefit of a north-south drive train layout, with the engine fully behind (or ahead) of the transmission. And of course Auto-Union already had this type of drive train orientation but with the engine in front of the transmission, making it quite easy to create the 4WD Munga.
So yes, VW did have the experience and drive train orientation in its north-south vehicles like the Transporter, but they simply didn’t want to bother diverting engineering resources for what was to be a low volume vehicle(s). This was even more so the case with the Golf Syncro, which of course required a redesigned transaxle with a 90 degree power take-off to the rear axle. And the whole rear axle/suspension required significant redesign. Leave it to S-P. VW had enough work on its hands at the time.
It seems to me that VW really missed out on an opportunity with their Sunco models, to position them more directly against Subaru. Something more in between the Golf Suncro and the Country, but more appealing would have been an Outback-type version of the Passat and Jetta wagons. But they would have had to been priced competitively against the Subarus. VW didn’t commit to a high enough volume to be able to lower the price to make them competitive. A missed opportunity.
I curious about that licence plate…
The VW Vortex forum states that about 300 1992 B3 Passats were imported into Canada, both sedans and wagons, all powered by the 1.8 L G60 (supercharged) engine producing 160 hp. None were officially sold in the USA. As Paul writes, a missed opportunity, although VW was seriously hampered by the unfavorable DM to dollar exchange rate at the time.
I’m not sure I would refer to the spare tire as a “Continental kit” (although perhaps you were being a bit tongue in cheek). I always assumed the swing-away tire carrier was because the spare tire well under the cargo area had to be eliminated to fit the rear drive axle and relocate the fuel tank. But I was unaware there were non-Country AWD Golfs, so maybe the tire carrier was indeed mostly for “butchification”.