The VW Golf A59 Is the WRX Rival That Should've Been
The World Rally Championship was extremely popular in the Nineties, and Volkswagen wanted in. To compete with the Celica GT-Four, Escort RS Cosworth, Impreza 555, and Lancer Evolution, VW needed a homologation special of its own. That car would've been an all-wheel drive, fender-flared Golf, codenamed A59.
An unknown amount of A59 prototypes were built by Schmidt Motorsports—which successfully campaigned the Audi V8 in DTM—and at least one survives. VW is taking the A59 on a tour of America, and it let our friends at parts supplier FCP Euro drive it around Lime Rock Park. It's an extraordinary creation.
The engine was developed from the ground-up, and it sends power to all four wheels via a custom six-speed manual gearbox and four-wheel drive system that's similar in spirit to later Golf R Haldex systems. Between 25 and 100 percent of the power can be sent to the rear axle, making the A59's all-wheel drive far more advanced than the MkII Golf Rallye's system. The bodywork addenda is made from carbon-kevlar, while inside there's an integrated roll cage and custom Recaro seats.
We don't know how much power the A59 makes or what it weighs, but FCP Euro's Nathan Brown says the speed is comparable to the Mk6 Golf R, which is impressive given the A59 was built around 15 years earlier. This car has some of the hallmarks of a rough-and-ready prototype, most obvious the race-car gauge cluster, but it's not hard to see how VW could've turned this into a production car. For Group A/Group N homologation, VW needed to build 2500 examples, and given the popularity of the WRX and Lancer Evo throughout the Nineties and into the 2000s, it's easy to see them selling far more.
A 2012 Pistonheads article says it's rumored that Ferdinand Piëch, the mad-genius engineer/grandson of Ferdinand Porsche who took over the VW Group in 1993, was the one to kill the A59. VW was in financial dire straits at the time, and Piëch is credited with turning the company around. Projects like the A59, while cool, weren't prudent in these circumstances, and when VW finally did have money, Piëch spent it on growing sales volumes and wild vanity projects like the VW Phaeton and Bugatti Veyron. VW eventually entered top-level WRC competition with the smaller Polo in 2013, taking the both driver's and manufacturers titles four years in a row, before pulling out in 2016.
The Golf R still exists today, but it's not nearly as wild as the A59. As the presenters of the video say, we'll never know what VW could've been like today if the A59 project had gone ahead.
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