Inside The Industry: TTAC Finds The Missing Etymology Of Passat, Golf, Scirocco, Polo

German launch catalog for the Polo

Where did the names of Volkswagen’s Passat, Golf, Scirocco, Polo come from? What is their meaning? For four decades, it was shrouded in mystery. Forty years later, a famous former Volkswagen CEO, Dr. Carl Hahn, and his illustrious former sales chief, “WP” Schmidt, help TTAC get to the bottom of an unsolved question,

Some of the worst performers in the truth department are the gossip press and the automotive media. A good deal there simply is fantasy. Knowing well that no-one will complain or check, bogus new product plans are being published. The large-scale availability of cheap 3D rendering software ( here is how it’s done) and of WordPress turns this disease into a pandemic.

Most of these lies come and go. Some stay and turn into history. A dark chapter of automotive history falsification is about the names of the new generation of cars that, in the early 1970s, rescued Volkswagen from the brink and that helped turn VW into the powerhouse it is today: Passat, Golf, Scirocco, Polo.

There is so munch nonsense written about those names, that we had to go to the very top, and ask the people who decided these names 40 years ago.

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  • EBFlex This doesn’t bode well for the real Mustang. When you start slapping meaningless sticker packages it usually means it’s not going to be around long.
  • Rochester I recently test drove the Maverick and can confirm your pros & cons list. Spot on.
  • ToolGuy TG likes price reductions.
  • ToolGuy I could go for a Mustang with a Subaru powertrain. (Maybe some additional ground clearance.)
  • ToolGuy Does Tim Healey care about TTAC? 😉