The Golf Rallye, for better or for worse

The Golf Rallye. To many, one of the greatest Volkswagens ever to roll off the assembly line. It was intended to be the primary weapon in a full-on assault for Group A in the World Rally Championship, which was emerging as the leader of the pack from the ashes of the now-banned Group-B machines. Only 5,000 Rallye Golfs were made and sold in Europe, although they are less rare than some other models like our own Mk2 GTI 2.0 16v's sold here in 1991 and 1992, they have a certain something that makes them one of the most desirable VW's out there. On the street that may still be true, but racing was something else for the Rallye.

The real world of rally racing treated the latest and greatest from VW Motorsport with little respect, not that it earned any. Going with not only a smaller and less capable base motor with the 1764cc 8v was one thing, going with a complex and, let's face it, delicate supercharger is another. A friend of mine was on the UK works-supported team contesting the British Rally Championship at the time, and he said they changed chargers regularly, with a fresh one for every stage, and that it wasn't unusual for them to go up in the middle of a stage. It was, as team manager David Power told him at the time, the only rally car he had seen that had storage for willingly carrying extra weight. Spare tires and spare superchargers. Something's wrong when a crucial engine part won't make it a stage without expiring.

Internet rumours abound about exactly what the VW Motorsport crew did with the Rallye to make the power it did. It was quoted at making around 280hp in competition form, but if you've ever driven a Rallye Golf, even with a highly modified G60 under the hood, the result is a little underwhelming, and 280hp they do not make. With a highly modified charger, ported and polished intake and exhaust ports and big boost, most 8v G60 motors struggle to get above 250 crank horsepower. Stock G60's of course, make around 160hp to the crank.

Word on the street from those lucky enough to own genuine VWMS parts is that there was some trickery with part numbers on things like cams, heads and the like. Bigger exhaust valves and noticeably different port shaping on the heads, more aggressive camshafts, you name it. My source said they never even got far enough into development to think about power, and were mainly concerned about making the cars reliable, which never happened. The superchargers, hand picked for the best and cleanest casings, were over-driven beyond belief. A super-small 48mm cogged pulley was mated to a toothed belt, which had the delicate magnesium displacer grinding itself away with every redline shift. As mentioned before, spare chargers with quick-change oil fittings were carried in the cars on stages, and probably were swapped more than punctured tires. Crazy.

The entire program, as my source said, was far from ideal. "The whole programme was a disaster. The cars were expensive to run and not fast enough. The Syncro system wasn’t ideal for rallying and the g-lader was too fragile for competition. However, VW was adamant it had a competitive package and never made the necessary changes to keep them competitive."

Indeed. So goes part one. We'll take a closer look at the two main problems with the Rallye -the Syncro AWD system and the infamous G-lader- in the next installment.

_WRS