The Most Serious Car In The World Is This Harlequin Golf Converted To Single Color By A Dealer

National stereotypes are usually tired tropes, but one that keeps coming back is German humor – or the lack thereof. Imagine, then, a car buyer who considers German humor too rich for their blood and will only accept a car with the joke scrubbed off.

In the mid-1990s, Volkswagen created multicolor special editions of its two best-selling hatchbacks. The Volkswagen Golf Harlequin and Polo Harlekin were built from blue, yellow, green, and red hatchbacks with their body panels swapped out, resulting in weird and wacky cars with no two panels the same color when bolted next to each other. In Europe, the Polo Harlekin (not Harlequin) was a success, with the original 1,000-car production figure easily overshot as Volkswagen ended up building 3,800 of the things. The Golf Harlequin, solely sold in North America, was a tougher sell: fewer than 300 were made, with some of them only changing hands when the car’s unique feature, the multicolor appearance, was removed. This Golf is one of those.

The original Golf Harlequin was a response to the Polo Harlekin. Volkswagen of America built four cars called the Golf Design, all different as they shared their panels, to truck around from car show to car show, and they got such a good initial response that a production run of 60 units was scheduled to be built at the Puebla assembly plant in Mexico.

As those sold, Volkswagen arranged for another 200 to be built, all with the “2.slow” 2.0-liter, 115-horsepower engine. The perfect number of Golf Harlequins must have been somewhere in between, as the final cars proved to be sales proof.

Chris Bernlohr, sales manager at York Volkswagen, told the Pennsylvania newspaper The Sentinel in August 1996 that it wasn’t “the end of the world” if the Harlequins didn’t sell. “If nothing else, when it’s parked out front, it draws attention. Your best display is what is parked out front”, said Bernlohr. The York dealership also used their Harlequin as a parts delivery car, as it was a mobile advertisement of sorts.

Some dealers, fed up with the clown cars sitting on the lot, simply repainted them and sold them as regular Golfs, which is the most boring yet not quite the cheapest way to do it.

Jim Ellis Volkswagen, of Atlanta, solved the matter in an even cheaper way. The dealership gathered eight unsellable Harlequins and simply rearranged the bolt-on panels again to create unicolor Harlequins. Each bodyshell received the same color panels with which it was initially built, before the Great Swaparound. Jim Ellis had an easier time selling two Ginster Yellow, two Pistachio Green, two Flash/Tornado Red and two Chagall Blue cars (with the color named after the Russian-French artist known for his use of blue), which continued their lives as Harlequins just like all the rest, only almost completely indistinguishable from regular Golfs.

The original asking price for the Harlequin was $13,775, or $150 over a stock Golf, with the automatic transmission a $875 option. It may well be that these swap-swapped cars even came with a stack of cash on the hood just to move them, in case they had sat on the lot long enough.

The Puebla-built Harlequins also didn’t get blue steering wheels and shifters like Polo Harlekins did, so only the Mondrianesque “Joker” upholstery would tell any onlooker that they were looking at a Secret Harlequin. As most Golf Mk3s seem to have been red, those have likely been the most anonymous next to the blue ones.

This reversal has in turn created the rarest possible Harlequin, a car that’s a special edition of a special edition. Out of the eight cars rearranged at Jim Ellis, the surviving blue one has popped up on Facebook Marketplace, and it’s currently for sale in Enumclaw, Washington.

The seller, who has listed the extremely rare Golf for sale for $15,000, says the car is now one of one. He’s the second owner, and he had the car verified at Jim Ellis in 2017 – it definitely is one of the de-Harlequined ones converted there.

Out of the 200-car run, it’s number 123, and its whereabouts were unknown for years before the current owner got his hands on it.

It’s said to be rust-free, especially at the rust-prone shock towers (man, do Mk3 Golfs rust in salty conditions), and it currently sits at 142k miles with supplied history. The 5-speed gearbox has been replaced with a new one at Volkswagen. Polos of the same age seemed to suffer manual gearbox issues, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the Golfs did, too.

Is it worth 15 grand? Sure. You can get a fine Golf for much cheaper, in the same condition, but this is one of those cases where the car’s history and story count for so much more than what you get in metal, rubber, plastic and cloth. Naturally, it takes a real niche Volkswagen person to “get” it, but for a specific buyer it could be just the thing to complete a collection. After all, these days Harlequins are cult cars and definitely cherished.

I’d also say the Mk3 Golfs are on a redemption arc. The first two generations are loved for their blocky design that’s aged incredibly well, the fourth generation brought a new kind of perceived quality to Golfs inside out, leaving the Mk3 as a sort of in-betweener that’s nothing like the older or the newer cars. It didn’t look like the old ones, nor did you get the quality feel the newer gen gave you (though Mk4 Golfs and Jettas have had their share of issues once they become regular used cars), so it often takes a special edition for a Mk3 to really stand out.

A good friend just replaced his latterly troublesome Mercedes E-Class wagon with a bone stock, super simple base model 1994 Mk3 with unpainted black bumpers, in non-metallic red, and he considers it his reset car, back to the basics, wind in the hair thanks to the OEM sunroof, worry-free thanks to having less stuff to break. It’s one of those extremely-1990s cars that once were seemingly everywhere and now seem to stand out when so many have vanished. He didn’t pay 15 grand for his, but ten percent of that: but it also doesn’t make him feel like a clown when driving it, unlike the Mercedes.

Images: Facebook Marketplace