Skip to main content

When GTI Fans Celebrate Father’s Day, They Think Wörthersee

Not long before the Treffen at Wörthersee this year, Volkswagen released a set of videos to celebrate the gathering’s 35th anniversary. The beautifully-shot vignettes feature GTI fans getting ready for the Treffen and Part 1 tracks the progress of a father and son preparing their Golfs. What you may not realize is that there’s a very good reason for that.

Every year the Wörtherseetreffen is celebrated on Father’s Day, which is a little different in Germany. Vatertag or Herrentag is celebrated on the fortieth day after Easter on a federal holiday called Ascension Day. And so, to celebrate the ascension of the lord Jesus into the kingdom of heaven forever opening the gates of eternal paradise to all earth’s people, Germans buy cheap ties for their dads and pull a wagon up a hill. They also use this as an excuse to get drunk, but that goes without saying.

Thanks to math, Ascension Day always lands on a Thursday, so for ease, you can think of it like a German, springtime Thanks Giving with no Turkey and fewer mall-related deaths. What they do instead of heading to a dangerous mall, is head into nature’s warm embrace. Anyone who’s read Grimm’s Fairy Tales knows what I’m talking about.

SiGray.Worthersee2016-9126

Way, way back in the 1980’s some government employees in Austria decided that the holiday would be a great time to promote tourism, because why celebrate Vatertag in the Vaterland when you can celebrate it in a place whose hills are alive because of music? Famous-by-Austrian-standards actor and Tourism director for the town of Maria Wörth, Erwin Neuwirth, decided that car lovers were the kinds of people he wanted to have in his town, so he got an ad out into Germany’s biggest car magazine advertising a meet for Golf GTI owners.

The first year went surprisingly well, with about 160 people showing up in 72 cars. Compared to this year’s treffen, it doesn’t sound like much, but for more than 150 people to schlep all the way from Germany to a field in Austria is actually impressive when you think about it. What’s more impressive is that the next year nearly 3,000 people showed up to celebrate Vatertag with the father of all hot hatches.

The video below, from 2012, features footage from the second ever Treffen, in 1983. If you turn on the closed captioning you can read about that second Treffen. Better yet, ignore the text altogether and take a look at how people were modifying GTIs in the early ‘80s.

Nowadays the guests number in the hundreds of thousands and the Treffen has more to do with the GTI than it does with fathers, but the holiday and the Treffen are still inextricably linked. So next year, instead of buying your dad a terrible tie or another power tool, consider taking him to lake Wörhtersee in Austria to celebrate the car that allowed him to be both responsible and fun, some of the best things a dad can be.

The post When GTI Fans Celebrate Father’s Day, They Think Wörthersee appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex http://ift.tt/21r75HN
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

    When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier.  The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow.   While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something .  To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it.  Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait.  So with this in mind, we lined our G...

2025 VW Taos gets styling tweaks, power bump

Filed under: Volkswagen , Crossover Continue reading 2025 VW Taos gets styling tweaks, power bump 2025 VW Taos gets styling tweaks, power bump originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 12 Sep 2024 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink  |  Email this  |  Comments from Autoblog https://ift.tt/5syqkoQ

Novitec, Unsatisfied with Aventador SV, Adds More Veloce

The Lamborghini Aventador SV is no slouch, but if you’re into Lamborghinis, chances are you’re into big numbers. Whether it’s in the bank or under the hood, a big number could, and perhaps should, always be bigger, which is where Novitec steps in. Novitec has been modifying Italian cars for years, and their Torado line is dedicated to making ridiculous Lamborghinis even more ridiculous. Their latest effort takes the Aventador SV and remaps the engine to give it 786hp and 544 lb-ft of toque. They’ve also fitted the car with a new exhaust system that cuts 50 lbs off the car. Other mods include a carbon fiber aero package, spoiler, front splitter and air intake, all of which helps it shed even more weight. The Aventador also sits on 21 (back) and 20 (front) inch Vossen wheels. So if you think that a regular Aventador is just a little too pedestrian, give Novitec a call and they’ll hook you up. The post Novitec, Unsatisfied with Aventador SV, Adds More Veloce appeared first on VWVor...