The Volkswagen Golf GTI was unveiled in 1975 at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The UK market had to wait a further two years for vehicles to arrive – 1977 saw 34 examples, all of them left hand drive, sold in the GTI’s first tentative year.
The GTI was powered by a 1,588 cc four cylinder engine with K-Jetronic fuel injection it developed 110 PS at 6,100 rpm and 103 lbs ft of torque at 5,000 rpm. This allowed the GTI, which weighed 810 kg unladen, to hit 60 mph from standstill in nine-seconds before reaching a top speed of 110 mph. Continue reading ‘1975 - 2008: The history of the Golf GTI’
Published September 28, 2008
in History.
Series founder Don Panoz called Paul Newman
“much more a contributor to the world than a taker. He was a dear friend and will be missed.”
The American Le Mans Series paddock remembered Paul Newman on Saturday as a larger-than-life personality and one of the world’s most renowned figures in motorsports. When hearing the news of his passing, stories and memories came flooding as testing began at Road Atlanta for Petit Le Mans powered by the Totally New MAZDA6, an event Newman competed in during the 2000 season. Continue reading ‘REMEMBERING PAUL NEWMAN: 1925-2008′
Thanks for everything SEAT! Sad to see you go but glad to have the memories.
SEAT UK can reflect on five highly successful seasons in the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship after winning 43 races and scoring 101 podium results in 150 races.
Having entered the series in 2004, Jason Plato and Darren Turner closed the chapter on SEAT UK’s motorsport programme by ensuring the Leon TDI was the top winning car in the 2008 BTCC campaign – with 10 race wins to its name. Nine different drivers won races in 2008, but no-one scored more than Jason Plato, who took his BTCC career total to 46 victories and 2136 points (in 276 starts) with eight wins this year. Continue reading ‘BTCC: SEAT UK leaves BTCC with 43 wins in 150 races’
This is one of “the” Volkswagens that set us on this journey. Many do not understand an auto enthusiast enthusiasm for a specific brand or in general. My first car was a 1972 volkswagen Squareback. The 411, although strange looking was such a great sight. There was something so nice and yet so odd about it.
Forty years have passed since Volkswagen presented the VW 411, at that time the company’s largest and most powerful model yet, to some 200 journalists in Wolfsburg. The journalists had earlier put the VW 411 through its paces on the new Volkswagen proving ground in Ehra-Lessien, testing the vehicle’s equipment and performance. Volkswagen built 367,728 units until production ceased in July 1974, and 416 of these are currently registered as old-timers. Continue reading ‘40 years ago: VW 411 makes its press debut in Wolfsburg’
Exhibition on history of Volkswagen in Brunswick at Altstadtrathaus
Axle production for the Beetle, 1957On the occasion of its 70th anniversary, the Volkswagen Brunswick plant and the Corporate History Department of Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft have organized an exhibition on the main stages in the plant’s progress from an outpost to the current business unit together. Its business success has made Volkswagen the largest industrial employer in Brunswick. Continue reading ‘Volkswagen celebrates 70 years at Brunswick’
The winning Volkswagen vans have been chosen for the ‘Five generations of Campervan’ display at Vanfest, Europe’s largest gathering of Volkswagen vans, which takes place at the Three Counties Showground, Malvern from 12 to 14 September. Continue reading ‘Winners of Vanfest ‘Five generations of Campervan’ display’
Wow. Wow. Wow. This has to be one of the best works of taking a old auto design and creating a new concept that is just spot on. Even down the matching of engine power from then to now. The 650 W12 seems to be making its way into a few cars. Hmmm… More images after the jump!
The 2008 Auto Union Type-D concept is a creation of Lukas Vanek, a young designer from the Czech Republic. In 2008 Vanek graduated from the Europeo di Design (IED) in Torino, Italy after completing a three year postdiploma transportation design course. Prior to these studies Vanek had finished a masters course in industrial design at the TBU university in Zlin, where he was awarded a scholarship to study at IED. Continue reading ‘2008 Auto Union Type-D Concept’
We can’t wait to get our hands on this new book. If you care to look back at some articles of ours in regard to this exact history, check out 1974 - 2009 Volkswagen Scirocco - Then & Now and Excitingly sensible: Volkswagen Scirocco 1974 - 1992
First book in a new series entitled “The Volkswagen Model Series”
With the market launch of the new Scirocco just round the corner, Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft’s Corporate History Department is presenting the story of a model with a difference in a new book entitled “Scirocco. Aufregend vernünftig. Der Volkswagen Scirocco 1974-1992.” Based on previously inaccessible documents from the Corporate Archive in Wolfsburg, historian and archivist Claudia Böhler for the first time traces the history of the first generations of the “desert wind from the Mittellandkanal”, from development and series production through to the marketing and sale of the Volkswagen sport coupé. Continue reading ‘The Scirocco story – Two generations of the Volkswagen sport coupé’
“The ‘Beetle’, the 356 and the 911 Brought World Fame to a Stuttgart District
1958 Ferry Porsche in the assembly hall in Stuttgart- Zuffenhausen in front of the model series of the 356 AIt was on June 26, 1938 that Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche KG, as the enterprise was then called, moved from Kronenstrasse 24 in the center of Stuttgart to newly-built premises in the district of Zuffenhausen. In May 1937, Ferry Porsche had already acquired a site there at the address Spitalwaldstrasse 2 (as it then was), thus determining the location of the later Porsche factory. 70 years on, the building newly completed in 1938 still forms a central part of the factory complex in Zuffenhausen. Continue reading ‘The heart of Porsche has been beating in Zuffenhausen for 70 years now’
Vanfest 2008 is here! This is such an awesome show, event, weekend! If you have the chance, please go.
Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles and the organisers of the world’s largest gathering of Transporter campervans, Vanfest, are inviting campervan owners to enter their vehicles into a special “??Five Generations of Camper” competition. The winning vehicles will be exhibited at a Volkswagen-sponsored display at the show which takes place at the Three Counties Showground, Malvern from 12-14 September. Around 8,000 Volkswagen campers are expected to attend Vanfest 2008, which is presented annually on behalf of the Volkswagen Type 2 Owners Club.
Continue reading ‘Vanfest 2008: Five Generations of Camper’
