Classic pearls of the future - VW Golf III VR6
10/04/2017
The VW Golf III VR6 will soon be 30 years old, so surely it should be a sought-after classic by now? One could certainly assume so, but somehow the third Golf generation seems to mature more slowly than other cars. Perhaps it's because many of them are still being driven around in everyday life today - after all, around four million three- and five-door saloons were built between 1991 and 1997. And in terms of design, the Golf III was perhaps not the happiest Wolfsburg creation.
But then there was the VR6, the first Golf with a six-cylinder engine. Installed transversely and producing 174 hp, it gave the Golf powerful propulsion and an inimitable sound resulting from the special design with a cylinder angle of just 15 degrees. In any case, the VR6 was the "it Golf" of the nineties chic crowd.
Even MAHAG boss Fritz Haberl, who also drove a Porsche 959, was full of praise for the VR6. In 1992, he was quoted in the magazine Auto Motor und Sport as saying that this engine in the Golf had torque that was pure driving pleasure and offered a level of excitement that went far beyond that of the first GTI. AMS called the Golf VR6 a "trend model" and put it on a par with the (original) Mini, the Range Rover, the Mercedes-Benz 500E, the BMW 3-series Cabriolet, the Suzuki Vitara or even the first Golf GTI. However, a VR6 cost DM 40,000 in Germany and this was not exactly conducive to rapid sales, so that overall production was limited to manageable quantities.
The Golf VR6 was an extremely comfortable yet sporty car that was not lacking in everyday utility, if you disregard the rather generous use of gasoline. The car could not hide the fact that the heavy engine was located on the front axle, but this left sufficient space for passengers and luggage. At just over four meters, it was still really compact and there was hardly a class competitor at the time that could also boast six cylinders under the hood.
I owned one of these cars myself, a rather rare three-door model in the fashionable color "Dusty Mauve". Purchased first-hand in 1993, it served me well until it had to make way for a Mercedes C-Class after 12,000 trouble-free kilometers. I still remember the sound of it today.
If you want to buy one today, there is a considerable range on offer, but there are only a few really well-preserved and original vehicles with manageable mileage on the market. The VR6 was the victim of a huge tuning wave at the time, which did not shy away from performance increases of up to 600 hp. Nevertheless, original VR6s are not overly expensive today, and you can still get hold of a perfectly good example for a price that is 15 to 40 percent of what you would have to pay for a well-maintained first-generation Golf GTI. This is unlikely to remain the case if the Golf III VR6 is one day discovered as a classic.
More classic gems can be found in the dedicated theme channel.
