Perfect Timing

DRIVING A 1989 VOLKSWAGEN RALLYE GOLF

- Michael Febbo

It’s September 1989; I’m 14 years old sitting on my bedroom floor with R.E.M.’s album Green—the band’s best work— echoing off the car-poster-covered walls from a then-cutting-edge Compact Disc player. I’m reading the latest issue of this very magazine, prior to 1991 called VW & Porsche. At the time, the Internet was only used by people even nerdier than myself, so opening the pages of a car magazine revealed actual new information. There it was, on glossy paper, the brand-new Volkswagen Rallye Golf in all its boxed flared and monochromatic goodness. The smooth integrated bumpers and projector headlamps took the boxy shape of the MK2 years into the future. Then, there was the drivetrain, a supercharged engine and all-wheel drive—the stuff of Gruppe B dreams.

Spin the wheel of time forward to May 24, 2017. I’m sitting in a Rallye Golf in Austria and I may not be wearing acid washed jeans procrastinating doing Algebra homework, but all the emotions are the same. But this isn’t the realization of a kid’s daydream; this created a temporal bridge. Almost three decades of life experience has led to this, but it all compressed into nothingness.

I could have driven a number of Rallye Golfs in the past, even in the United States—although it was never officially imported here. Those experiences wouldn’t have worked. The road wouldn’t have been perfect; some aftermarket shop or owner would have ruined the car a dozen different ways in an effort to “make it theirs.” It would have broken the continuity between that 14-year-old’s vision and the current reality. This is the way it has to happen.