They say winter’s the best time to buy a convertible to get the best deals, but you’ll struggle to find another example of this Mk2 Golf soft top one-off…
The Mk1 convertible went on sale in 1980 and remained on the market until 1993, selling 18,000 examples in that period before being replaced by the A3 platformed Mk3 which was released in the UK in 1994. So why wasn’t there a Mk2? Good question, because we’ve yet to find a definitive answer…
Yet there have been attempts to create a Mk2 Golf convertible – and we printed pictures of a Bieber speedster conversion in our blog back in June. Now photographs of another ‘more authentic’ conversion have emerged, reportedly a show car produced by Karmann.
The car was a prototype that sadly never made it into production, the one photographed here is thought to have been scrapped when the project was abandoned. It differs from the ‘speedster’ by being a pukka four-seater and by having what looks like a proper hood with a glass, heated rear windscreen. The fact that there’s no exhaust pipe hints at the fact that it was probably just a rolling shell minus the engine, and the tonneau cover hiding the interior suggests nothing had been decided regarding the dashboard and cabin treatment…
Why Karmann decided not to pursue the concept remains unknown but no doubt the answer lies deep down in the vaults of the Osnabrück coachbuilder. What it did mean though was that at least the classic lines of Mk1 survived beyond the lifespan of its tin-top stablemate…
Ian
The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of VW Heritage
It uses Jetta rear lights, rather then the Golf version, shame it was never made!
One of the reasons for not producing the MK 2 Golf Cabriolet could have been the prohibitive tooling costs required to put the car in to production, especially when the days of the MK 2 were already numbered and therefore better to concentrate on the new A3 platform MK 3 convertible.