As some of you may know, Independence Day is on Monday, and to celebrate birth of these United States we thought we’d tell the story of another powerful agent of democracy: the Golf GTI. Just like the forefathers, the Golf GTI gave power to the people and, little known fact, it was Benjamin Franklin’s love of golf that inspired the Volkswagen’s name. Interestingly, the dizzying success of the Golf GTI (which came to us nearly 10 years after it was introduced in Europe) has a great deal to do with the dismal failure of Volkswagen of America’s first American factory: Volkswagen Westmoreland Assembly.
Although Volkswagen had a number of models for sale in the ‘60s and ’70s, the car that supported the brand was the Beetle. With the inevitable arrival of the ‘70s, Beetle sales were struggling. By 1974, Volkswagen were in a full on financial crisis. The brand needed a new car to replace the Beetle and compete with water-cooled economy cars from other manufacturers.
Enter the Golf. Diametrically opposed the Beetle in its design, the overall effect was actually pretty similar: a small, cheap, simple people’s car. Like the Beetle, the Golf was a sales success.
With the fuel crisis at its peak the 1,900 lb, fuel-efficient little car was a big success in America, too. As a result, and in an attempt to avoid international currency fluctuations and high German wages, Volkswagen decided to build the Westmoreland Assembly plant, just outside of New Stanton, Pennsylvania (the same state that birthed the US!).
Things started well in New Stanton, but they took a turn pretty quickly. The Golfs (known as Rabbits at the time) built in America were slightly different to their European counterparts. The head of the plant, Jim McLernon had been Chevrolet’s manufacturing chief and had some ideas about how to make the Rabbit more American, something that fans of the European model would come to call the “Malibu-ing” of the Rabbit. Basically, the car got fat. The seats became cushier, the suspension got softer, and the car got heavier (though, admittedly, some of that had to do with safety regulations). And on top of that, the Rabbits were said to have worse build-quality than their German counterparts.
Fast forward to 1983 and the end of the gas crisis meant that Americans weren’t really into a watered-down econobox. Over in Europe there was a solution: the GTI. Unfortunately, VW of America couldn’t help but be VW of America and they had planned on building a Rabbit S, which would have added only sport seats and a GTI-like suspension.
Fortunately for everyone, two things happened. The Quantum got 14-inch alloys that fit onto the Rabbit and VW developed a federalized version of the 1.8L intended for the 1983 (German) GTI. Volkswagen of America threw in the new engine, threw on the new wheels, and the Rabbit GTI was born. There were some slight differences between the Rabbit and the Golf GTIs (the Rabbit weighed more and so needed slightly different suspending) but the American version was good enough. The press was effusive.
Road and Track wrote, upon the car’s introduction, “Get yourself down to your nearest Volkswagen dealer and ask to take a test drive in the new Rabbit GTI, then call your loves ones and tell them you’ll be home in a couple of days, because if you’re anything like us, that’s how long it will take you to come back down. What a car!”
Car and Driver, meanwhile, called it one of the ten best cars of 1983. “This product should be a cause for rejoicing among all those people ever owned a Beetle or treasured the high-protein goodness of a BMW 2002, because this car marks a return to the fundamental German verities by Volkswagen’s badly withered American manufacturing and marketing arm,” wrote Car and Driver. “In our introductory story on the GTI, we called it ‘the car we’ve all been waiting for,’ and that’s exactly what it is. A fast, entertaining, high-quality car at an affordable price, built on an American assembly line by American workers.”
Sadly, it couldn’t save Volkswagen Westmoreland Assembly. The plant’s supply chain was too poor, the plant was beset by labor issues, the writing was already on the wall. The plant struggled on for a few more years, but in 1987 Volkswagen announced that they would be shutting the plant down.
Only two years after the Rabbit GTI left the factory, the Mk1 was replaced and the name “Rabbit” went with it. And though the birth of the American GTI was ignominious, the car itself, crucially, was excellent. It proved that American buyers wanted the same thing as European buyers, and gave the nation born on the principles of democracy access to the most democratic car out there.
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