How do you follow a warm, cuddly leg end like the Beetle? Volkswagen wisely decided on something completely different. Herbie the Love Bug was replaced by a businesslike, front-engined, front-drive, water-cooled sedan that looked like a stylized shoe box.
Indeed the Golf, known as the Rabbit on our shores, was a bona-fide member of the “folded paper” school of design. Its flat panes and sharp creases virtually defined the term “econobox.” The shape was not without controversy: many professional designers still hate it, citing the Maserati Ghibli or just about anything else as a better example of the folded-paper genre.
The public, however, had other ideas. The world was still reeling from Fuel Crisis 1, and functional, industrial style was in. The Golf clicked. Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, whose genius was then in full bloom, the Golf was a purposeful device that shouted “efficiency” but was actually a joy to live with. The boxy Fiat 128 came first, but it was the Golf that legitimized the folded-paper look for all the people who wouldn’t know a Ghibli from a gimlet.
So perfectly attuned to the times was the design that it was cloned by several car-makers. The Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon, the French Talbot Horizon, the Mazda 323, and the Fiat Strada were virtual Xerox copies. No other automobile in history has inspired such a chorus of fawning imitators. There’s no arguing greatness when a design starts multiplying like, um, rabbits.
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