24 Jun 08
The Scirocco made its debut in 1974. It was one of the first front-engined, water-cooled Volkswagens, developed under Volkswagen moderniser Heinz Nordhoff and his successor, 'the father of the Golf' Rudolf Leiding.
Nordhoff started the development programme for the modern front-wheel-drive vehicles, despite resistance within the company - the rear-engined, air-cooled layout was thought by many to be a Volkswagen trademark - and also correctly predicted that buyers would move away from separately-booted saloons and coupes into more practical tailgated hatchbacks.
Leiding commissioned Giorgetto Giugiaro and his ItalDesign studio to create a pair of designs: one for the Golf hatchback, and the other for the related three-door Scirocco coupe on the same underpinnings.
Both Scirocco and Golf owed a lot mechanically to Auto Union (a conglomeration of four historic German car-makers, Audi, Horch, DKW and Wanderer). Volkswagen had bought Auto Union in 1964, and by the time it added NSU to its empire in 1969, work was well underway on the 'family' of front-engined vehicles.
First of these was the Audi 100 (1970), which was then followed by the Audi 80 (1972) and its sister model, the Volkswagen Passat (1973). All these models shared a layout with transversely-mounted engine and a space-saving independent suspension design; the platform was then shortened for the Scirocco and Golf.
