Is there something wrong with that Golf II?
He looks a little strange, doesn’t he? We can’t quite put our finger on it either… This second-generation Golf was the car that carved the concept of a solidly built, family-friendly hatch out of granite. It was built from 1986 to 1992 and a whopping 6.3 million eventually rolled out of the factory.
Every now and then the engineers liked to brag a little and enjoy themselves. The GTI proved the Golf could hold its own on the road and this model, the Country, was a rather bizarre 4×4 that was derived from the first four-wheel drive Golf (the Syncro) and had nothing to be ashamed of in rough terrain.
How did Volkswagen make it?
VW actually let the smart people of Puch in Austria indulge their low lusts on the Golf II. Puch was also the company that built the Mercedes G-class at the time and took care of the mud parts of the first Panda 4×4. Fewer than 8,000 Golf Countrys were built and they were especially popular in Europe’s Alpine regions.
The example here is rare and mostly original, except for a few parts that are, erm… well, not. The cylinders of the 98 hp 1.8-litre four-cylinder were bored out for some extra power when the current owner overhauled the engine, the rear brakes (drums) have been exchanged for disc brakes (good idea) and it has a better radio.
It’s so high, it must be insane to drive…
To our big surprise, it actually drives very tight. You’d expect the Country to lean through corners like a half-blown bouncy castle, but it still feels quite confident and mature. Don’t get us wrong, it’s still very 1990, but you could still live with it today.
Compared to a regular Golf, you sacrifice some luggage space and the reinforced subframe doesn’t even give you that much extra ground clearance, but otherwise it is almost a harbinger of everything that people would appreciate in SUVs. It doesn’t seem to be that bad off-road either, but we didn’t try that. Just like most 4×4 drivers, that is.
And what is that sensible-looking thing next to it?
You could have just missed it: the ‘charismatic all-rounder’ of the Golf VIII range. It has electronic four-wheel drive to help in meteorologically dire conditions, sits 15 millimeters higher and has some extra body parts to make it look tougher.
He shouldn’t be tying the Country’s shoelaces just yet; when you ride it on other people it has that supercar-like ‘what’s that?’ effect. Nevertheless, we are charmed by the latest Golf station wagon, visually the most successful to date.
Has Volkswagen lost the fun a bit?
The Volkswagen Golf Alltrack may not give the ‘if Frankenstein’s monster drove a car, it was this’ feeling of the Volkswagen Golf Country, but it does have heated seats and Apple CarPlay. We won’t get into the issues with VW’s touch screen again here, but sitting in a Golf is a very different experience these days.
It’s completely inconceivable that the company would sneak a game into the infotainment somewhere, let alone allow engineers to indulge in a model they could make purely for fun. Deadly sin, actually.
Thanks to Lloyd Tulloch for lending us his Volkswagen Golf Country
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