Did you know:
- The first generation of the iconic Golf was introduced in 1974 as the successor to the popular yet hopelessly outdated VW Beetle.
- The Beetle was produced in Mexico until 2003, but after Ralph Nader’s book "Unsafe at Any Speed" sparked a safety panic over older car designs in the USA, Beetle sales plummeted to zero.
- Volkswagen thus accelerated its development efforts, and by the end of 1974 the first customers were already able to purchase the new model.
- Italian stylist Giorgetto Giugiaro designed the first generation. Its light and attractive design, German engineering quality, and affordable price made the Golf a global sales phenomenon.
- Within the first few months, the Golf became the brand’s best-selling model and in 1975 won the Car of the Year award in Australia.
- Today it’s little known that under political pressure in the United States, the VW Golf was sold as the Rabbit. This was due to the oil-embargo crisis known as the Gulf crisis.
- Perhaps the only drawback was weaker anti-corrosion protection, which eventually affected all first-generation owners.
- With each successive generation, the Golf gained new and more customers thanks to its legendary reliability—but there was a catch.
- Undoubtedly, the Golf was and remains a highly reliable and well-built car, but its almost mythical reputation was partly engineered by Volkswagen managers who “encouraged” specialist magazines and automotive editors toward overly positive reviews.
- A notable feature of the Cabriolet was its fabric roof made of five layers for strength, noise reduction, waterproofing, thermal comfort, and UV resistance.
- Within two years, the roofless Golf became so popular that every European automaker of the time rushed to launch its own decapotable in order to offer customers a convertible.
- To date, over 37,000,000 units have been produced across eight generations.
Technical specifications:
- dimensions: length 3.81 m, width 1.61 m, height 1.41 m
- weight 910 kg
- body type cabriolet
- power unit gasoline engine 1.5 8V with 52 kW output
- maximum speed 150 km/h
- acceleration 0–100 km/h in 14.3 s
- gearbox 4 forward gears + 1 reverse
- fuel tank capacity 40 l
- fuel consumption 7.4 l/100 km
- seating capacity 5
Designer version Cabriolet by Klaus Kapitza:
“The first prototype was created in 1976, initially without the safety roll bar. We decided to add it later for series production. Colleagues called it the ‘strawberry basket’—a name I really disliked.”
Assembly instructions
