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Man Maths: Volkswagen Corrado VR6

1 month ago

Writer:

Andrew Frankel | Ti co-founder

Date:

17 May 2025

To be honest, I’ve had better days. April 1992. Red-eye to Hanover, taxi to Wolfsburg, collect brand new Volkswagen Corrado VR6. Drive back to UK. Doesn’t sound terrible so far. Over border into Belgium, minding own business at 80mph when black BMW 325i comes honking past, then slows, then disappears off into distance, then slows. Bait dangled once too often, when he sets off next time, I follow, overtake, look smugly in the mirror and am greeted by blue flashing lights behind the kidney grille. Done up like a kipper.

It gets worse. Passport confiscated, fine I have no money to pay. Escorted to cashpoint which fails to cough up a single centime. Escorted to cop shop where they don’t take credit cards, given number of taxi firm whom I have no means to pay, swap Corrado for passport, get cab to a bank in town, tell poor sod at wheel that if he wants to get paid he’ll have to wait, go into bank, throw self on their mercies, who ring my bank and release enough readies to pay fine and taxi; get cab back to cop shop, reunite with Corrado and key, continue journey. A few hours later lose passport on boat.

And yet, when that bloody car met up with another 325i the next day for its formal comparison test it duly wiped the floor with hitherto the best car in its category by a mile. ‘It’s a classic,’ I wrote between the pages of Autocar & Motor magazine. ‘…its talents run so deep it takes a while for them to sink in completely. Certainly if, in 20 years’ time it appears on the cover of some classic car magazine with a headline saying “One of the all-time greats” we wouldn’t be surprised.’

Frankel and the Corrado VR6 got off to a rocky start

Not my pithiest conclusion perhaps, but you get the point. But it seems no one else did: not 20 but 33 years later Corrado VR6 prices are nowhere near those of similar age late Mk2 Golf GTIs 16vs, despite its punchy, sonorous 2.9-litre six-cylinder motor and their puny little 1.8-litre four-cylinder engines. I think it’s just one of those cars we all forgot.

But I never did, so allow me to remind you. Putting that big motor in such a small space and then asking it to drive the front wheels could have spelled dynamic disaster, as it had for the Alfa 164 only four years previously. Instead it wrought a miracle: installed in a car weighing just over 1200kg, its performance put that of the near 1400kg BMW to shame. Perhaps that was to be expected, but that it would also outhandle the beautifully balanced BMW most certainly was not. But it did: the way it used its front end heft to pivot the car into the corner, with a degree of passive rear-steer which dialled out understeer the faster you went had to be felt to be believed. I don’t even recall the ride quality being that much worse, despite having very humble rear suspension compared to the BMW. I loved the way it looked inside and out too.

One of the world's best-handling front-wheel drive cars? The Corrado is definitely up there

The original 1988 Corrado was a clean and cohesive design

So what about one today? I think the problem is that rightly or wrongly – in my view entirely wrongly – these are cars that have never been cherished, which means that finding one that’s been properly looked after could prove a Herculean task. Most have six-figure mileages, the best I saw being an 88,000 miler for £7750. I did spot one with just 29k on the clock which looked perfect (and would have needed to be for the £17,500 asking price) until I clocked the fact it was a ‘rare auto’ version. An automatic Corrado VR6? Like finding a seagull just dumped in your gin and tonic.

So sadly I think it’s probably a stone best left unturned, not least because if it was going to transform into one of the aforementioned ‘all-time greats’, it’s hard to see how it would not have done so by now. So perhaps I’m best left with my memories, which is that of one of the best front-drive cars I’ve driven. And I’d hate to drive one now that’s been neglected and find nothing more than a poor shadow of its former, once genuinely great, self. Which I fear is probably what would happen.

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