Press "Enter" to skip to content
Warning!
We have 15 years of archives. Links older than a year may have been updated to point to similar cars available to bid on eBay.

Tag: Harlequin

This site contains Ebay partner affiliate links, which may earn us a commission at no additional cost to you.

1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin

Update 3/25/19: This car appears to have sold at $5,000.

Update 3/1/19: Although it listed as sold for $3,050 in the auction which ended 2/22, this Harlequin is back and not joking around, with $5,000 worth of bids this time as of this morning.

So I’ll start off by saying that we usually try to find the best examples of cars that we can. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist, or even to have particularly good vision, to note that the Volkswagen Golf in the picture above is NOT the best example out there. In fact, we recently looked at what may be one of the best Mk.3s left out there – albeit an odd one – just a few weeks ago:

Riders Wanted: 1993 Volkswagen Golf Ryder with 31,000 Miles

However, if you know anything about water-cooled VWs, you also know that the car above is quite special. It was not because it had the best spec, or the most power, or the highest price tag; in this case, it was all about the marketing and it’s one of those cases where an oddball becomes incredibly endearing to a very small group of people. If you were to buy this car and turn up at a ‘normal’ automobile enthusiasts’ home, they’d probably think you’d gone mental with your recent purchase. Full of rust and mis-matched panels, as well as likely a lot of miles and even more likely a ruined interior – not to mention what is sure to be a host of mechanical woes – this Golf probably looks to most like it’s ready for the wrecking yard. But turn up at a VW show in this car even in its partially destroyed state and all eyes would be on you, because this is a Golf Harlequin, and in the world of water-cooled, that’s a pretty special thing:

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin on eBay

4 Comments

Duck Duck Goose It: 1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin Replica 3.2 VR6-swap

The Golf Harlequin is one of those strange creatures that ostensibly would look more at home in a art festival than in a car show. Volkswagen’s “Chinese fire drill” of body parts from primary colored Golfs was an interesting exercise, leading to the moniker Harlequin – a reference to the colorful and semi-psychotically eyed ducks, themselves named after a colorfully dressed character in Italian 16th century theater. Now that you’ve learned something, these Golfs have become legendary and desirable in their own right despite effectively being a base model underneath, leading to the replica color scheme not only extending to copies of the originals, but even to replicas utilizing other Volkswagen models. My local Volkswagen dealer, for example, has used the scheme not only on post-Mk.3 delivery Golfs, but even their Chevrolet Express parts vans have the mismatched tones. But today we’ll look at a replica GL which has gone to great lengths to mask itself in the colorful attire. Unlike the originals, though, this one has a serious weapons-grade revision in the drive department:

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin Replica VR6-swap on eBay

1 Comment

1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin

For a brief amount of time, I drove a Mk3 Volkswagen GTI. While it didn’t have the VR6, I still have fond memories of that car. It wasn’t the sportiest of hot hatches, nor the fastest, but it did everything well and I had nary a problem with it. Midway through the Mk3 production run, Volkswagen went a bit wild with the paint shop and released the Golf Harlequin. This was part of a design series for VW and an attempt to draw more traffic in the showrooms. There were four versions of the Harlequin, each with a different “base” color. This Harlequin for sale in Washington state has a Ginster Yellow base color and seems to have escaped the ravages of rust that plagued many Mk3 Golfs. It is also refreshing to see one that hasn’t been modified and the mileage is reasonable considering its age.

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin on eBay

Comments closed

Tuner Tuesday: 1996 Volkswagen Golf Supercharged Harlequin Replica

Pretty much everyone knows that Volkswagen enthusiasts are a special breed, but even within Volkswagen enthusiasts there are some really devoted fans of a particular sub-model. One such example of this is the Golf Harlequin, seemingly a joke by Volkswagen dealers to get rid of excess body panels. In truth, it’s one of the really neat exercises by a major that reinforces my belief that Volkswagen just does things differently than most other manufacturers. Seriously, could you imagine Mercedes-Benz shipping a bunch of S-Classes out to dealers in different colors and telling them to swap body panels around? The Harlequin Golf was and remains a neat page in Volkswagen history that generally brings a smile to VW fans. So, it’s no surprise that the Harlequins are very sought after, even if they appear all in one color because the dealer was lazy – no joke! But are they sought after enough to warrant a replica?

CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1996 Volkswagen Golf on eBay

Comments closed