With Volkswagen being among the oldest car brands, it goes without saying it has an amazing array of concepts and prototypes in its collection. Some of those gems are locked up at the VW Classic warehouse in Wolfsburg where roughly 200 cars sit under the same roof. YouTuber Jamie Orr had the privilege of checking out these vehicles, some of which have never been seen before.
The tour starts with two highly publicised race cars, the ID.Rs from Goodwood and Pikes Peak. However, the one that caught our attention was the stillborn Golf GTI TCR Mk8. Back in December 2020, VW announced it would pull out of all motorsport activities, which consequently meant killing its Touring Car Racing programme. The reason why it's fully covered in camouflage is that the car was never officially revealed, but you can easily see it would've been a little monster.
The collection also includes a bunch of electric Golfs from yesteryear along with what is arguably one of the most interesting Golfs of them all, the Cross Country. It's not all about Golfs and race cars as we can also see the fullsize Phaeton saloon, the rare Beetle RSi, and a Passat R36. One prototype worth pointing out is a 1987 Polo with a two-cylinder supercharged diesel engine.
The stealthy Beetle is a 1946 example, thus making it one of the first-ever built by VW. Then there's the forgotten NILS concept, a single-seater EV that still looks futuristic more than a decade later. Near the end of the walkaround video, we're being reminded the company built a couple of Beetle RSi convertibles.
Understandably, most of the collection is dedicated to the iconic Golf. We had hoped to see more examples of the Corrado and Scirocco, but it's the compact hatchback that made VW what it is today and therefore deserves most of the available room in the warehouse. The Mk8 on sale today is not the end of the line as a ninth-generation model has already been confirmed as likely the last to still have a combustion engine.
The Golf is still going strong:
Source: Jamie Orr / YouTube