Today I saw one of the fake MkV Rabbit Harlequins that our local VW dealer created back in 2007 (I didn't get a pic but here are some I borrowed of the aforementioned fakes)
A quick little history lesson on the Harlequin, if anyone is interested
back in 1995 VW created a special edition Polo, by taking 4 Polos of different colors and disassembling them and switching body panels which resulted in 4 different 'schemes' and the Polo Harlekin was born:
it was mildly popular so VWOA took four Golf GLs in late 1995 (96 models) and under the name VW Design used them as show cars to see if there was enough interest to bring the Harlekin to the US:
well I guess they decided to go for it and approximately 264 Golf Harlequins (no one knows the actual total not even VW) were built and sold in the US, Canada and even a few in Mexico.
Even the Mexican beetle joined in on the fun with some production Harlequin Beetles:
so fast forward to 2006 when VW shows this commercial for the new Volkswagen Rabbit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMpoBL5LZGM
Cute Commercial and because of the multicolored 'baby' rabbits there was a lot of questions about weather or not VW was bring the Harlequin back... they did not but my local VW dealership decided to make these quite ugly faux Harlequins themselves by painting the body panels the different colors, back in 2007 I saw these on the lot and thinking that it was an actual VW model stopped and talked to the salesmen, who didn't even know what a Halequin was and told me that the body shop painted at least four different cars. While I love the original Harlequin and would love to own a real 96 Harlequin Golf one day (I have loved them since I saw my first one in 1996 at the same dealership) I think these fake renditions are hideous and today was the first time I have ever seen one since that day on the lot back in 07.
A quick little history lesson on the Harlequin, if anyone is interested
back in 1995 VW created a special edition Polo, by taking 4 Polos of different colors and disassembling them and switching body panels which resulted in 4 different 'schemes' and the Polo Harlekin was born:
it was mildly popular so VWOA took four Golf GLs in late 1995 (96 models) and under the name VW Design used them as show cars to see if there was enough interest to bring the Harlekin to the US:
well I guess they decided to go for it and approximately 264 Golf Harlequins (no one knows the actual total not even VW) were built and sold in the US, Canada and even a few in Mexico.
Even the Mexican beetle joined in on the fun with some production Harlequin Beetles:
so fast forward to 2006 when VW shows this commercial for the new Volkswagen Rabbit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMpoBL5LZGM
Cute Commercial and because of the multicolored 'baby' rabbits there was a lot of questions about weather or not VW was bring the Harlequin back... they did not but my local VW dealership decided to make these quite ugly faux Harlequins themselves by painting the body panels the different colors, back in 2007 I saw these on the lot and thinking that it was an actual VW model stopped and talked to the salesmen, who didn't even know what a Halequin was and told me that the body shop painted at least four different cars. While I love the original Harlequin and would love to own a real 96 Harlequin Golf one day (I have loved them since I saw my first one in 1996 at the same dealership) I think these fake renditions are hideous and today was the first time I have ever seen one since that day on the lot back in 07.
These days, finding any Peugeot in America still running on the roads is near impossible. Last time I saw one was a 505 in North Carolina back in 2010.
