The VW Golf Rallye

In 1989 (busy year, I know) VW created the Rallye homologation special called the Golf Rallye (or Rallye Golf, whatever you fancy). This car was developed to comply to the FIA standard so they could compete in the FIA WRC. One of the demands of these standards was that a car which raced in WRC had to have a production volume of atleast 5000. Eventually they built 5071 of those.

You could recognize a Golf Rallye on the outside by its wide arches, rectangular headlights (yay) and its different alloys. For the rest it looked just like any other Mk2 Golf. For example, you had the same taillights, same size and the wide arches aren’t that easy to recognize (especially from the side).

The Golf Rallye was powered by our good friend called the 1.8 8V G60. The displacement had been turned down to 1763 CC (normal had 1781 CC) this was because of the FIA regulations. Obviously this car featured the Syncro AWD Volkswagen used at the time for better grip. The car also featured a cable-shifted transmission. The engine eventually put out a healthy 161 HP.

The car was produced in Volkswagens plant in Brussels, Belgium and it cost about 50.000 DM which was about double a base GTI. Officially none were sold in the US but they did send two over for testing and five for evaluation. Volkswagen of America president James Fuller supported the plan of the car coming to the US market but he sadly got killed by a terrorist attack on his plane. This obviously made the Rallye coming to the US a more difficult task. Eventually it didn’t happen because Volkswagen of America decided it was too expensive to go on sale there since Volkswagen was seen as a low-cost brand at the time.