Project EA266

What if the Volkswagen Golf had never happened? Well, we might have been driving rear-engined VWs for a little longer. And they might have looked like this

- Richard Gunn

How do you eclipse an icon? Well, for Volkswagen, it proved pretty difficult superseding the Beetle. There was the relatively successful Type 3 1500/1600, the ungainly 411/412 and the pioneering but ultimately dead end K70. Over in Brazil they had the Brasilia and the Gol, of course. But none actually ousted the aircooled legend. It wasn’t until the Golf came along in 1974, spawning a whole load of desirable front-wheel drive, water-cooled siblings, that VW could finally breathe a sigh of relief, knowing its future was secure. Well, secure so long as nobody tinkered with emissions testing several decades in the future of course…

Rearward thinking

However, one potential Beetle successor dating from the late 1960s never made it into production. Which is rather a shame because Project EA266 was an intriguing example of ingenious engineering, a collaboration between Volkswagen and Porsche that proved a curious missing link between VW’s aircooled and water-cooled offerings.