1982 Volkswagen Scirocco Keeps Its Charm

From the August 1981 issue of Car and Driver.

I knew that there was a new Scirocco coming to replace the coupe that has been delighting us since 1974. I knew that I would only have to wait a couple of months to try it when it was launched before the European press in the spring of this year. Nevertheless I bought one of the current models, and am not a whit sorry.

If you think that means the new car is a failure, think again. When I tried it, the new Scirocco confirmed that it was better than the existing one in many re­spects, some of them quite important. It turned out to be inferior to the old one in only one respect (it is a little heavier), and then to a degree that is only percep­tible in the measurement of urban-cycle fuel consumption. It looks different from the old Scirocco, very different, but whether that makes it better or worse is a matter of opinion. As for the importance to be attached to the fact that the new car is 6.5 inches longer than before, that is an environmental matter: it depends where you want to garage or park it. No, the new Scirocco is an undoubted success—not merely because it is better in enough ways than the old one, but more because in all the things that really matter, the things that made the old Scirocco such a lovely lit­tle roadfaring tool, such a wonderful cosmetic aid, such a solace to salesmen and a comfort for accountants, the new car is just like the old one. Its character is completely the same, which means that VW will keep all its old friends while making some new ones.

Engineers who fear that their work is swamped by stylists’ may take heart from this retention of the Scirocco’s identity and integrity. The bodywork of the latest model is wholly new; what preserves that admirable character must therefore be the fact that the machinery beneath is virtually unchanged. The 106-bhp version (the fuel-injected 1.6-liter with a close-ratio five-speed gear­box) now has ventilated front brake discs, but that rev-happy little wonder will continue to be withheld from Amer­ica. As for the others (including the 1.7-liter wofflebox due on parade in the U.S.A. next spring), about the only me­chanical innovation of any consequence is the availability of the wide-ratio 4+E gearbox, in which top speed is reached in fourth gear and fifth is only for low­-consumption cruising.

High gearing is not the only aid to fuel economy in the new car. Aerody­namic drag has been reduced, too (it would have been commercial folly had VW not been able to claim some improvement, however trivial), bringing the Cd down from 0.42 to 0.38 while keeping the frontal area the same 18.3 square feet as before. Considering that the roof has been raised, and the air dam lowered, the tight tucking-in of the body contours has evidently been a rigorous exercise in width reduction, and that is probably why the styling of the new car has been done by VW itself in­stead of farming the job out to some­body like Giugiaro, who designed the first one, or even to Karmann, who built it and will build the new one.

The real priority of the body re­shapers was to make more room, espe­cially for the heads of the hapless folk sitting in the little rear seats. There could be no significant increase in legroom, because the wheelbase had to re­main unchanged. The increase in head­room is small enough for it to be measured best in millimeters—ten above the front seats, eighteen above the rear—but in a car as closely tailored as the Scirocco those increases are significant. More indicative of the pressure that customers must have been applying is the increase in luggage capacity, up by 20 percent. The rear seatback can still be folded forward to turn the car into a two-seat grocery van or holiday tourer, but it is a pity that it was not split to allow either half to be folded in­dependently to make a nice three-seat compromise. Even more of a pity is that the miserable little 10.5-gallon fuel tank was not enlarged: once again, the reten­tion of the original wheelbase combined with safety regulations forbade any such change. At least the headlights have been improved, though they are still poor: if not as bad as the horrors im­posed on America by a heavily protected domestic industry, German headlights are still the worst to be found in Europe.

Maybe German street-lighting is the best. Trying the new Scirocco gave me no opportunity to remind myself: I was taken to France to drive it, over those roads in the Maritime Alps where the cooperative nature of the local authori­ties is even more surprising than the many corners, and where everybody from Rolls-Royce to Renault finds an excuse to launch new cars (and occa­sionally even motorcycles) for press as­sessment. It is not only the roads that are tricky; the weather can be treacher­ous up in those altitudes, and on this occasion the arrival of Setright was co­incident with the arrival of the first rain for several weeks, resulting in some of the slimiest road surfaces I have ever encountered this side of a precipice. I shall skate over (if you will pardon the expression) the time when I had one of the cars sliding so comprehensively that the only way to salvation lay in negotiat­ing the oncoming roundabout in the wrong direction; that was simple driver error, and I do not think that anybody saw me do it.

Elsewhere, wheelspin was something to be induced at will rather than encountered at hazard, especially with the power of that marvelous injection engine under the hood: with peak power at 6100 rpm and peak torque at 5000, and the sort of gearboxes that make it possible to stay within that re­gime throughout most of the car’s speed envelope, one can play racer more effectively in this car than in al­most any other within sight of VW prices. With the lesser carbureted en­gines, the 82-hp 1.6-liter and the 67-hp 1.5-liter, the feeling was merely of liveliness and adequacy respectively, but the breadth of their lower-tuned re­sponses was enough to match the wide ratios of the 4+E box. This five-speed­er is optional, unlike the close-ratio box in the 106-hp car; the standard equip­ment is a four-speed box in which the ratios are identical to the first four of the 4+E. The long-striding economy gear is not available at all with the smallest and feeblest of the Scirocco en­gines, the 58-hp 1.3-liter; but that little creep is not even coming to Britain, let alone America.

The variations in body trimmings are less wide than before, because VW has expunged the basic N (for “Normal”) version and now starts the range with the tolerably well-equipped L. Like all the others, this has a laminated wind­shield, halogen headlights, plastic-­sheathed bumpers, and spoilers front and rear. The swankier GL gets height­-adjustable front seats, a four-spoke steering wheel, a tachometer and a digi­tal clock, and some fancy trim and exterior brightwork. The GT has slightly better headlights, an oil-temperature gauge, grippier upholstery, and a re­volting sticker inside the rear window, emblazoning the name “Scirocco” all across the bottom. Fortunately this vul­garity can be peeled away; maybe it was only put there to draw attention to the fact that the window now curves down over the rear to improve the view when parking. A slot in the rear spoiler guides air down over the glass, doing so well enough for clarity to be maintained in wet weather. This only works at open­-road speeds, so a rear wiper is still needed for clearance of accretions, but that necessity is now relegated to the options list.

Are the salesmen trying to per­suade us that the airflow management of the Scirocco is now really good? Once out of the showroom and onto the road, they should not have to try very hard. The improvement is not merely of 10 percent in drag; aerodynamic lift over the tail has been reduced by 60 percent. It has taken a lot of line-soften­ing to achieve that, and the car no long­er looks as distinctive as it did; from a distance it could be mistaken for a product of the styling studio of GM, Nissan, or Toyota. That could be seen as the penalty of having the work done in house rather than giving it to an inde­pendent stylist, but with its own very good wind tunnel and a small army of aerodynamicists available it would have been a bit silly of VW to do anything else. By itself, Volkswagen is perfectly capable of producing something a lot snazzier than this mild-lined production Scirocco—something that was demon­strated by putting on show at the launch an experimental body with such flaring and dammings, such swellings and spoilings, as made the most sporting of the production cars look like a suburban shopping cart. Shod with 195/50VR-15 tires on seven-inch rims, it could have been a showpiece; but the VW engineer in charge of it let me have a drive, dur­ing which no doubt was left in my mind that it was truly a go-piece.

VW took no credit for the amplifica­tion of power that made this special such a goer. An independent tuning firm, Oettinger, had done the engine work, including a twin-cam, sixteen­-valve cylinder head and some quite elaborate intake and exhaust manifold­ing. The upshot of all this was 130 bhp at 7200 rpm, and there is no question of VW ever attempting to make the kit itself; VW just bought it from Oettinger to see what it was like (as you could, if you were rich) and to compare it with its own experimental engines. Volkswagen did it justice with its work on the car: uprated spring and dampers (by Koni, instead of the usual Bilsteins) gave it a very positive feel, and the tires did the same—though on the slippery, wet roads they could not always deliver the grip they promised, making me wonder whether these NCT Goodyears were re­ally as good as the super-tacky P7s al­ready homologated for the Scirocco, however good they may be as rivals for the P6. It was great fun, though, the en­gine screaming up its scale with the ut­most alacrity and all the good-tempered smoothness of the regular GTI. Even with the production suspension, involv­ing anti-sway bars front and rear, the GTI Scirocco is a quite exceptionally agile and controllable machine; on fif­teen-inch P7s on the homologated 5.5-inch rims it is even better; and if this experimental car with its wider wheels and tauter suspension is any indication of what VW might have in store for the future, the new Scirocco is already more than welcome.

For American Scirocco addicts with a hankering for more refinement, the fu­ture is already on the roads and in the showrooms of Europe. The most marked difference in the new car from the old one, looks apart, is its quietness. There used to be a resonance that made the old car boomy at anything over 70 mph; that has been ironed out of the new car. What with wind noise being virtually eliminated, conventional rain gutters having been removed (and re­placed by shallow grooves in the roof) in the cause of drag reduction, the Sci­rocco is very much kinder to the ears than ever it was. I felt that the brakes were better too, but I may have been led astray in this judgment by my familiarity with the brake of right-hand-drive ver­sions, where the linkage between pedal and booster is rather nasty and sloppy.

One increase that is definite is in glass area, greater by 20 percent. I am not convinced that one sees any more, or any better, for there is now an awkward blind spot right behind the B-post. There is also an increase in weight, but it is so slight as to be appreciable only in a fractionally poorer urban-cycle mpg figure. At higher speeds the car drinks less fuel because it disturbs less air; for the same reason it goes slightly faster flat-out, reaching as much as 118 mph in the 106-hp GTI or GLI. What the performance of the American version will be cannot yet be forecast accurately; but assuming retention of the familiar 79-hp 1.7-liter engine, there should be a couple of miles per hour more at the top end than at present, and no other significant difference. An automatic transmission will be available (as it is in Europe on the 67- and 82-hp cars), and there will be sealed-beam head­lights to ensure that you do not travel too fast at night.

The new Scirocco is scheduled for U.S. introduction early in 1982, they told me; do not feel too badly treated, for even in nearer England we shall not see it until October. The Scirocco ac­counts for 4 percent of the total VW sales, and 1.3 percent of the German market must be kept happy before the combined forces of Wolfsburg and Osnabrück (home of Karmann) can at­tend to the likes of us. That is why I bought a 1980 model.

Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com