The Volkswagen Corrado VR6 sounds like a winner | Revelations with Jason Cammisa | Ep. 10

[Music] here are three shortcuts to creating a legendary sports car first you must wrap it in sultry italian sheet metal then you have to call it something that makes you roll your r's and finally of course it needs a screaming engine or you could cheat and copy an old design and then make up a name that sounds like it's romantic but actually is meaningless and then you can dust off an old italian engine layout from the history books ladies and gentlemen please say bonjourno to the very very german volkswagen corrado [Music] there is but one thing all car companies have in common they all want to make a sports car vw's first real attempt at a sports car became the porsche 914 when volkswagen's chairman dropped dead and his replacement wanted nothing to do with sports cars vw's second try to make a sports car also became a porsche the 924 which was sold off to porsche after another last second change in vw management for its third attempt volkswagen got lazy or just smart depending on how you look at it rather than make a purpose-built sports car it could pull the same trick it used turning the beetle into the carmen ghia put a sexy italian designed body on a utilitarian car say hello to shirako designed by giorgitto gidaro the shirako was like it's golf mechanical twin one hell of a performer style meat substance and shirako meet sales success the second generation shirako was the same basic car inside a heavier and less attractive body and people didn't really love it but volkswagen decided its sports coupe should be the vehicle to debut all new powertrain technologies so even though it was in its old age the mark ii scirocco debuted volkswagen's first ever 16 valve engine turning the sirocco into a scirocco 16 valve and creating and i quote from period reviews a super coop to be reckoned with the image maker thing must have gone over well because volkswagen decided the third generation shiraku would do the same thing unfortunately that meant the new car would be so expensive to produce that volkswagen couldn't position it as a scirocco replacement the shirako was already way too expensive so vw decided to continue producing the mark ii scirocco and invent another even more premium sports coupe that would sit above it but of course it needed a new name because you can't have two cars with the same name so volkswagen came up with the name typhoon which is german for typhoon and sucked vw's naming convention was quite limiting all of its cars were named after winds golf for gulfstream jetta for jetstream polo after the polar winds even passat and scirocco were winds and so the new vw broke wind or more accurately broke with volkswagen's tradition of naming its cars after winds the scirocco's replacement would be called the corrado which is a completely made-up name that sort of sounds like to run in spanish but more importantly it could be italian and that keeps with the cardinal rule of sports car naming but what about that italian styling well the mark one sirocco was unquestionably italian vw says the mark ii was done internally but i call foul the mark ii scirocco has a hofmeister kink and it looks identical to a jajaro concept done for bmw which of course had a hofmeister kink so in the world according to me the mark ii shirako was also a jijaro design albeit a slightly stolen one the corrado went back to the mark one sirocco's actual jijaro design it was an almost identical but far chunkier copy of the gorgeous mark one right down to the kinked window line and trapezoidal c-pillar and it was gorgeous still is it was a performer too the third gen vw sports car was mostly a mark ii golf underneath and so not surprisingly the corrado was praised for all of the things the gti was great at including great steering nimble handling and packaging the corrado has a genuinely usable back seat and a big trunk in a world of cheap feeling impractical and flimsy sports coupes the corrado offered a more expensive more sophisticated german experience plus it had a rear spoiler that deployed electrically reducing rear aerodynamic lift by a very precise very german 64 we see this kind of stuff all the time now but trust me this made quite a stir in late 1988 and so how about that final rule of making a sports car the engine um true to volkswagen's stated goal the corrado was used to debut a new powertrain and it made for the first and only north american appearance of volkswagen's g60 engine this was the old 1.8 liter eight valve four-cylinder fortified with boost from a new positive displacement supercharger that volkswagen designed in-house it made horsepower noise and vibration in equal measure and who eased its way to 60 considerably behind its predecessor the far lighter scirocco 16 valve [Music] not a good start look the corado was supposed to be a showcase for new powertrain technologies and the magazines said the new engine was a big disappointment potential customers said um i think i'll take a honda prelude and volkswagen said oh sh they had forgotten the third rule the needed a standout engine let's talk about that reality for a second this is a tiny little car it's eight inches shorter and four inches narrower than today's tiny little subaru brz so it's not like you can shove an enormous engine in here that is the biggest and most powerful 16-valve four-cylinder volkswagen made at the time it was the optional engine on this car in europe and it was maxed out in bore there was no way you could go over two liters without adding more cylinders and this is what a two and a half liter straight six looks like i'm gonna put it right here on top of the four cylinder and you're gonna see a problem right off the bat the engine ends past the end of the car and it doesn't even allow room for the accessories and belts on this side you can't put it this way because this is where the transmission starts and that's something you can't just change so a straight six was never going to work another solution would be to take that six cylinder and split it into two making a v6 and v6s are short so it would fit left to right but even if it did fit front to back it wouldn't leave room for things like a radiator or crash space and besides v6s are very expensive to produce because they have two heads and if we're being honest they're also very rough and usually don't sound very good the compromise came in the form of an engine layout that lancia had pioneered back in 1922 vw reduced the v-angle from a v6's typical 90 or 60 degrees to just 15. that meant the cylinders would be close enough together that the engine could use just one cylinder head but of chief importance a six-cylinder fit where a four-cylinder used to live it was barely any bigger it was genius and the magic sports car recipe was complete this is the vr6 it displaced 2.8 liters and made 178 horsepower and man did that fix the acceleration problem it knocked almost 2 seconds off the 0 to 60 time which is now 6.4 seconds on its way to 141 miles an hour this put it at the absolute front of the super coupe class ahead of even the turbocharged all-wheel drive eagle talon and mitsubishi eclipse but it wasn't the speed that really transformed the corrado it was the noise period road test described the four-cylinder g60 as sounding like the backstreet beatings of an overage oppa band but praised the vr6 for creating music from the depths and heights of a great symphony orchestra with a feel for pops [Music] and that was before they compared it to mozart and to f1 that's formula one not mclaren f1 though fun fact the mclaren f1 did use the corrado side mirrors and nothing nothing else anyway the biggest problem with the vr6 engine is that 30 years later we're all still arguing ironically about its name vw now calls it a v6 which it isn't but it's also not a straight six either indeed that's why the vr6 was called vr6 it was a combination of v6 and r6 which is the german abbreviation for inline six because it's a combination of both get it the vr6 does have its cylinders in a v but it uses offset crank pins to give it a straight six firing order and it's almost as smooth as a straight six and sounds like one too just with a little bit of a warble thanks to its head design you'll notice i said head it has one it only needs one and it's thanks to all of this packaging benefits that this is really the best of all worlds the vr6 powered corrado also got some pretty unusual upgrades while the four-cylinder corrado was mostly a mark ii golf underneath the vr6 got its running gear from the mark iii golf that meant little things like a switch from a rod to a cable actuated shifter and five lug wheels but also a bulging hood and wider fenders to fit bigger suspension components the vr6 corado actually had better weight distribution than the old g60 and it trounced that car's already impressive handling and braking performance in fact it beat everything in its class including the acura integra gsr and the eagle talon tsi but all of that performance came at quite a price badged slc here in america for sports luxury coupe its sticker bloated from the original corrado's 17 900 to over 25 grand by the end that's like 45 000 of today's dollars enough to buy you a brand new subaru brz with enough money left over to buy a second used brz and so the corrado vr6 sales were abysmal though i'm not sure that's actually such a bad thing because if there's something else that always guarantees legendary status among sports cars it's scarcity transformed by one of the best sounding engines to ever be put in a production car with incredible rip-off italian looks and a great name the volkswagen corrado always was and always will be a revelation [Music] wow [Music] okay so you're just gonna keep the ferrari framed out the entire time right yep okay action i'm not some rich youtuber asking you to like and subscribe hey up up up up up up up up up up up keep the ferrari out i'm an automotive journalist asking you to like and subscribe and that's because that's how youtube works if you don't click those buttons youtube doesn't know you liked what you've just seen and isn't going to show you any more of it and if you don't like what you've just seen well join the club and by that i mean the hagerty drivers club which gets you access to this award-winning magazine as well as discounts on amazing stuff and if if you still don't like what you've seen well then just leave a nasty comment because that's how the internet works i need to go clean that up

Channel: Hagerty

Views: 365,724

Rating: 4.967917 out of 5

Keywords: Hagerty, Classic Car, Classic Cars, Hagerty Drivers Club, collector car, enthusiast car, collector cars, scirocco 16v, camisa, camissa, hofmeister kink, Mk2 Scirocco, Giugiaro, Guiguiaro, Italdesign, Herbert Shafer, design, VR6, VW AAA, AAA VR6, B3, A3, Mk3, Mk2, Mk1 Scirocco, Scirocco, Sirocco, Siroco, DOHC VR6, V6 sound, VR6 sound, wookies, R32, VW V6, Porsche 924, Porsche 914, asso di quadri, ace of spades, ace of diamonds, head gasket, headgasket, BMW M50, M50B25, cylinder head

Id: GY5qOUSGQQY

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/sadandaimless1]

The Corrado honestly is one of my favorite Volkswagens, it looks good, it handled good and the VR6 engine was an interesting concept within itself, and a spectacular engine with a good powerband at a time in which most of the competition was just four cylinders, with only the Mazda MX-6/Ford Probe offering a V6, some mid-size sedans weren't making as much horsepower as the Corrado VR6 was making back then. But the downside of the VR6 was that it suffered from a lot of mechanical issues that were common with these weird VW engines (W8 anyone?), but not as bad. Also impressive is that that VR6 engine was used in a lot of VWs at the time like the B3/B4 Passat, MK3 Jetta and the MK3 Golf GTI that really made those cars stand out from their competition at the time. The VR6 got better overtime as they improved on the engine in terms of power ('02 was when power went up to 200 HP, an 16-18 HP increase over the original 172/174 HP) and reliability for over a decade until 2004, when they transitioned the GTI and Jetta to the 2.0T in '05/'06.

[u/Juganator]

Such a love/hate relationship with the VR6 if you ever had one. Sounds awesome and pulls nicely but makes relatively small cars front heavy and drinks gas like you wouldn’t believe. I averaged 18 MPG in my R32 while GTI guys could beat me easily with a tune and still get 30 MPG. And may god save you if your timing chain goes.

[u/Land_Rover_Series_3]

Revelations is one of my favourite shows on YouTube right now.

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Love the Corrado too, always had a thing for these.

Would love to get one at some point.

[u/callingyourbslol]

This is the first car I ever loved. Like realistically, this might be the car that made me a car guy. When I was 10, my aunt lived in an apartment near my house and my buddy in that complex had an 18-year-old brother with a brand new VR6. I assume he was slanging because they didn't have money, but I'm glad he was because he'd take my buddy and me out for cool cruises to Pete's Fish and Chips or Pancho's and sometimes out to the farms around Luke to rip it around (those who know, know).

I'm sure half of it is the fact that the car was badass and half of it is the nostalgia of doing cool stuff that most other kids weren't doing, but I always wanted to do cool stuff in cool cars after that. I could never really put together a way to get into a Corrado -- wasn't down to slang and didn't really have a lot of money for cars until after college and couldn't really make the case for a toy even at that point. And now that I can, I can't talk myself into $15 or $20k for something that newer cars just do better in every way. I guess I'm just boring now, but I'll always love this car.

[u/Deflated_Hive]

I think what a lot of historians and journalists fail to mention, that in its failure and death, it birthed the New Beetle and Audi TT. Two VWAG coupes that were far more iconic for their brands and long-lived (you know, until they got caught cheating emissions).

VW/Audi was in dire straits in the mid-90s which contributed to them axing the Corrado. They had products that were poorly positioned against US and Japanese brands. It really took a whole brand revamp with the Mk4 platform for them to bounce back.

It's crazy how the Bauhaus styling was a huge departure and allowed them to step away from the traditional Scirocco/Corrado/Karmann shape to regain their footing. Although they squandred their opportunity with rebirthed Scirocco as it lacked the striking image of the Mk1.

[u/HeelToe62]

Still kicking myself for not buying this car when I saw it for sale 13 years ago:

https://improvedtouring.com/album.php?albumid=6

[u/JetsFanInDenver]

I love the VW VR6. It's great in the Passat. But i never drove the Carrado VR6.

[u/dicksquadmonopoly69]

Anyone know of somebody with a clean Vr6 for sale?? Been looking for one for a while now. Located in NY.