Forget VW’s Bad April Fools’ Jokes, Because You Can Own A Real Rare Rolling Circus Of A Car

I don’t know what it is with brands and April Fools’ Day lately. April 1st is supposed to be a silly day, one where you present ideas that are either clearly jokes or so absurd they come back to being plausible again. Some brands don’t get that, and tease their fans with genuinely awesome things without a tinge of humor. Volkswagen has done that twice already, most recently by teasing an awesome Harlequin car, and then failing to deliver a car or a good punchline. But fear not, dear reader, because if you want a goofy clown car, you can still buy one! This 1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin is an outrageously rare example of when Volkswagen was innovative and fun, and it’s for sale right now.

A Volkswagen Golf normally isn’t a remarkable car, but here’s one you’ll want. Volkswagen built just 264 Volkswagen Golf Harlequins for America and these multi-colored masterpieces somewhat rarely show up for sale. Perhaps weirder than a car painted in four colors is why Volkswagen did it and how the cars were produced.

Most people would avoid a car with so many colors that it would cause an American Homeowners Association to go into DEFCON 1. However, when was the last time you saw a car this bold from the factory? In a world where most cars are grayscale, a Harlequin is a burst of needed color.

Created Almost By Accident

The story of how these cars were created is fascinating from its inspiration to production. We should start at the beginning, where you’ll learn that these cars weren’t even originally intended for production.

Depending on who you ask, there are two origin stories for the Polo Harlekin, the later Golf Harlequin, and the super rare Beetle Harlequin. As a note, “Harlequin” is spelled with a “k” in Germany, hence the model name differences in the previous sentence. Either way, the name refers to the comic performers of the past, who often dressed in colorful garb.

It started with the third generation of the Volkswagen Polo supermini, which was entering production in 1994. One of the advancements brought on by the Polo was Volkswagen’s Baukastensystem, a modular system that cut the Polo into four categories. Customers configured their Polos through a color-coded system to select the desired drivetrain, interior, special equipment, and paint color. The green block symbolized paint color while blue was for the engine and chassis, yellow for the interior, and red for options.

Where retrospectives on the Polo Harlekin divert is how Volkswagen came up with the color coding.

A story sometimes reported is that Volkswagen was inspired by a 1964 Len Sirowitz-designed advertisement for the Beetle. That advertisement proudly showed off the fact that you could fit several parts from different model years onto your Beetle. This was illustrated with a Beetle wearing a blue hood, a green fender, a beige fender, a red roof, and a turquoise door.

It seems plausible that Volkswagen got the Polo Harlekin’s color coding from that vintage ad.

However, as the Polo Harlekin Registry and Car and Driver note, the Harlekins and Harlequins were creations of their own. The Polo Harlekin Registry notes that the four colors very likely originated from within VW. Reportedly, 10 multi-colored Polos were created in 1994 and 10 more were built in 1995. These cars were built to advertise the Baukastensystem in brochures and were rolled into dealers for the Polo MkIII’s launch.

Customers loved these cars–which were painted in Chagall Blue, Flash Red, Ginster Yellow, and Pistachio Green–enough to begin asking where they could buy one. The car was also shown at the Frankfurt Auto Show, where more people fell in love. The strong public response convinced Volkswagen to produce a run of 1,000 Volkswagen Polo Harlekins. Then, demand was still high enough that VW produced a second run of 2,806 units.

Production Polo Harlekins looked largely similar to the early cars with some small changes. Volkswagen also didn’t limit the circus to the exterior, either, as the Polos got “Joker” plaid interior fabrics, a Harlekin shift knob, and bold color steering wheels.

If you really wanted to amplify your Polo Harlekin drive, you had to obtain a set of color-tinted Hella taillights. Have you ever seen cooler ’90s taillights?

The Harlekin craze in Europe was a big enough deal that McDonald’s decided to celebrate 25 years in Germany by raffling off 500 cars. These were regular production Polo Harlekins from the second run and there’s proof that people did win their colorful Polo Harlekins from Germany’s McDonald’s outfit.

Given the popularity of the Harlekin in Europe, Volkswagen thought it could spark another craze in North America. Of course, we didn’t have the Polo here, but Volkswagen was able to give us the next best thing by applying the Harlekin treatment to four Golf MkIII show cars displayed in 1995. Once again, Volkswagen got a public reception that was positive enough to justify putting the Golf version of the Harlekin into limited production.

In 1996 and just for that year, North America got two Harlequins. You’ve probably already heard of the Golf Harlequin before, but Mexico would also get its own Harlequin. The country was still producing the Beetle and a scant 141 Beetle 1600is would get the Harlequin treatment. The only listing I could find for a Beetle Harlequin (below) was for a car imported into Germany from Mexico.

The Golf and Beetle Harlequins would be similar to their Polo counterparts, only the red used here was Tornado Red rather than Flash Red. The cars were also built in the same way, which might not be how you would expect.

See, every Harlekin and Harlequin was built in a base color. You could identify this base color by looking at the car’s rear quarters, rockers, and roof. If you have hood access, you’ll see the base color in the engine bay, too. These cars started lives in a single color. Then, factory workers in Germany or Mexico (for the North American cars) would physically remove panels and doors and swap them around cars, creating four different color patterns with the four colors.

Sadly, the American Golf Harlequin looked the part on the outside and did get snazzy interior fabrics, but we missed out on the finer details like the colored steering wheels, special shift knobs, and the numbered keychains that ended up in the hands of the first 1,000 Polo Harlekin owners.

Perhaps even sadder was the fact that Americans just didn’t buy many Golf Harlequins. People were excited at the auto shows, sure, but few actually showed up to the dealer to buy one. Perhaps it was as I said earlier and people knew they couldn’t be seen by their HOA driving a car that looked like it was cobbled together at the local junkyard.

Volkswagen of America had a hard time selling the Golf Harlequin through 1996 and reportedly, the car was dropped before it could even be sold for a full year. Reportedly, Jim Ellis Volkswagen of Atlanta struggled so hard to sell its Golf Harlequins that the dealer reassembled its stock into Golfs of singular colors. Presumably, this means that there are a very small number of single-color Golfs out there sporting the Joker interior.

This 1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin

That brings us to the Golf Harlequin for sale today. It’s up for grabs in a Bring a Trailer auction that ends in a day. Bidding is currently at $15,120, which would normally be far too much money for an Mk3 Golf. However, there are just 264 of these out there, so you’re not looking at any normal Golf.

If you aren’t a Golf fan, I’ll let Volkswagen explain why you might care about the third-generation Golf:

From August 1991, Volkswagen kick-started a new era of safety with the third generation of the Golf. Firstly, the Mk3 Golf was the product line’s first model available with front airbags from 1992 and secondly, great progress within the context of body design also led to significantly improved crash properties. Volkswagen revolutionised passive safety as this improved protection benefited millions of car drivers around the globe. However, several more product line milestones are linked to the Mk3 Golf: the first six-cylinder engine (VR6), the cruise control system, the first oxidising catalytic converter for diesel engines, the first diesel direct injection engine and the first side airbags. In May 1994, Volkswagen celebrated 15 million produced Golf vehicles. In 1997, the third generation was phased out after 4.83 million produced vehicles.

Sadly, the Golf Harlequins weren’t that special under the hood. All of them came with a 2.0-liter four making 115 horsepower and 122 lb-ft of torque. Americans should count their lucky stars because the strongest engine offered in the Polo Harlekin pumped out just 75 horses. The other good news is a five-speed manual transaxle, so you could still get some fun engagement behind the wheel.

Reportedly, this example was sold new from Jeff Sikes Volkswagen in Huntsville, Alabama, and went on to live what appears to be an easy life. The car resided in Georgia and Ohio before eventually finding its way into Illinois, where it is now. Along the way, it’s racked up just 79,000 miles. I love that. Clearly, it wasn’t daily driven into the ground, but the Golf Harlequin gets driven.

Now, this is a mid-1990s Volkswagen we’re talking about here, so don’t expect to be blown away by features. This Golf Harlequin features such luxuries as an alarm, a height-adjustable driver seat, a premium AM/FM/cassette stereo, power locks, and floor mats. Obviously, this is a car you want to buy because you want to own your own rolling circus, not for its performance or luxury. These cars are so rare that the last time I remember seeing one was 12 years ago in Chicago.

Still, the automotive landscape is a sea of gray today and this car, even in its crazy state of four colors, could be more welcome now than ever before. But, leave it to VW to disappoint us again. If you have the kind of cash this car will command, rush over to Bring a Trailer and drop a bid before the auction ends. Let the clown show begin!

(Images: Enthusiast Spec for TheAutobarnStables, VW)