Once the air-cooled era ended, the People’s Car began a metamorphosis that picked up speed, both figuratively and literally. Volkswagen had long offered a low volume, hand-finished model with sporty looks in its lineup, and from its introduction, the front-wheel-drive Scirocco was both popular and competitive. The final version of that sleek 2+2, the 16V sold here between mid-1986 and 1988, was then the most powerful and athletic VW to date.
It’s been 35 years since the Tornado Red Scirocco 16V on these pages left the Karmann factory in Osnabrück, Germany. That respected coachbuilder, active between its 1901 founding and 2009 bankruptcy, had been building specialty models—including convertible variants of the Bug and Golf/Rabbit, plus the eponymous Type 14 and Type 34 Karmann Ghias—for primary client Volkswagen since 1949. Karmann was responsible for producing two generations of Sciroccos that spanned between 1974 and 1992, with nearly 796,000 units built. The Mk 2 Scirocco represented just shy of 291,500 of that total, with this
