Yahoo Autos The Volkswagen Corrado VR6 Is A Rare German Gem
Volkswagen might have designed the Corrado to be a Porsche 944 competitor, but in reality, all it managed to be was a worthy successor to the second-generation Scirocco. In 1988, Volkswagen's Karmann-built "European sports car" launched with a choice of four-cylinder engines, one of which was supercharged. It had an interesting exterior design with a long roof and a short rear end, and it certainly wasn't the most practical hatchback money could buy.
But it wasn't a sales success, especially not in the U.S. Maybe it was too weird for America to begin with, and the picture only got more complicated once the VR6 engine was announced for 1992. VW's now-famous narrow-angle V6, with two banks of three cylinders separated by a mere 15 degrees sharing a single cylinder head, allowed VW to fit a six cylinder engine into a body based on a MkII Golf, designed originally for inline-fours. The W12 in modern Bentleys? Yeah, it's the same idea, just more of it.
America got the 2.8-liter VR6 instead of the 2.9, with less power and a taller suspension as well, but despite all those restrictions, the U.S. Corrado VR6 still managed to reach 60 mph in 6.5 seconds in Car and Driver's 1992 road test. The car came with BBS wheels and an active rear wing as standard, and the press predicted it would be a future classic straightaway. Yet sales remained so poor that the car was discontinued globally after just seven years. After 1995, people had to wait until 2003 for VW to launch another VR6 sports car, in the name of the MkIV Golf R32. Meanwhile, the remaining Corrado VR6s are cherished wherever people manage to find them.
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