This unique automobile shown here is known as the 1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin, and it’s car number 10 of just 264 examples produced. The story begins in the 1960s with an old 1964 VW Beetle advertisement, where the car had multiple colored panels, advertising it me easily interchangeable parts. When Austrian business magnate, engineer, executive and chairman of the executive board of Volkswagen Group in 1993–2002, Ferdinand Piëch was looking for a way to introduce the new Mark III Polo in the United Kingdom, he thought back to this commercial. The Volkswagen Polo, which is essentially the smaller sibling to the Volkswagen Golf, went viral for it’s time when the company announced a ‘Polo Harlequin’, which was a marketing idea that became more popular than anyone ever excepted at the time. Harlekin, or the US spelling ‘Harlequin’, literally translates to varicolored, and in order to showcase all of the different color options for the new MK III Polo, Volkswagen built 20 examples of the ‘Polo Harlequin’ which all had body panels finished in Flash Red, Ginster Yellow, Pistachio Green, and Chagall Blue. These cars were planned to be used for various auto shows, and suddenly, people did not want a Polo in a standard color, or even just one singular color for that matter, they wanted to multi-colored example shown on the auto show floor. This subsequently led to 3,800 Polo Harlequin examples to be produced between 1996-98, and the idea of creating a Harlequin variation of the Golf model. Volkswagen produced a much more conservative 4 examples of the Golf Harlequin in 1996 to be shown in North America. This quickly lead to another 60 examples to be built for retail sale, followed by another 200, some of which were sent to Canada and Mexico. This car, number 10, was originally delivered to York Volkswagen, where it was primarily used as their parts delivered car, and has since racked up of 300,000 miles.
How many made? 264
Engine: 2.0-liter inline-four rated at 115 horsepower.
Debut: Originally created as a show car in 1995
Top Speed: around 140mph
0-60mph: around 6.7 seconds
Photo credit: @am_media_ny
Research: @rarecarsonly