Images and video courtesy Volkswagen AG
It’s hard to believe, but March 29, 2014 marked the 40th anniversary of the first production Golf rolling off Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg production line and into the history books. That car -decidedly ordinary now, but virtually radical in its day- would turn the Volkswagen concept on its head and take the People’s Car into the next century. Looking back over four decades, today’s Golf is the the seventh generation of this nameplate, under which more than 30 million examples have been sold around the world.
Volkswagen’s own AutoMuseum has just opened a new exhibition to celebrate this iconic Giorgetto Giugiaro-designed car, which would spawn the hot hatch GTI and which Americans came to know in 1975 as the Rabbit. That exhibition, running through October 5, is called ”40 Years of the Golf: The Early Years.” Not only are unusual, rarely-seen prototypes and other special variants being highlighted, but so are the ways in which VW redesigned its production facilities to build the car, increasing the number of robots on the line and making the work more ergonomic and human work-friendly.
Visitors will enjoy seeing everything from a pair of early production Golfs that were rallied from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego to a Wilhelm Karmann GmbH-designed and -built Golf Cabriolet prototype (without the production model’s famous roll hoop!) and a Porsche 928 expensively rebodied to look like a standard Golf. Of special note to Americans is the very first Rabbit to be built at the Westmorland, Pennsylvania, plant in April 1978.
This special exhibit was teased at the 2014 Techno Classica Essen, where one of Volkswagen Classic‘s display theme was the 40th anniversary of the Golf. Techno Classica attendees could inspect a cutaway first-generation Golf, meet and greet famous racer and Mk I GTI owner Hans-Joachim ‘Strietzel’ Stuck, and even wish the Golf a happy birthday.
Happy Birthday, Golf (and Rabbit)- Life begins at 40!
