It’s a bold claim, but it’s been advanced lately that the Volkswagen Scirocco, which will be debuted at the Geneva Motor Show next month, will also head to the U.S. at some point, even though we lack official confirmation at this point. And yes, it is a tad dramatic way to refer to what is, after all, a car.
The Scirocco, however, has not only a cool name that suggests a unification of science and Morocco. It also represents the global theory of automotive design coming to the U.S. Instead of dividing cars into sporty and economically sustainable, the Scirocco reaches for both with a design that sacrifices a bit of the Golf’s trunk for the flared rear wheels reminiscent of early Porsche Boxsters.
Buyers will get LED taillights, xenon headlights, bladed front air intakes, leather steering wheel, built-in stopwatch, and a by now familiar—say it with us—turbocharged four-cylinder engine. It’s been six years since the Scirocco was first introduced, and the U.S. has looked wistfully, like the neglected schoolchild it is, as the other kids of the world have zoomed around in the perfect bliss of driving a sport coupe.
Oh sure, we have plenty of coupes here. But they’re not sport coupes. We have our precious muscle cars, and imported sports cars, and legions of domestic comfort cars. But when it comes to sharp, sporty things that would be appropriate for Jason Bourne to shoot down alleyways? Well, not us. The sharp efficiency of a two-door with a little bit of grunt might be a distinctly European idea, and like our forebears, we want not only what we have, but what everyone else has, too.
You might even catch subtle clues in the press photos that Volkswagen provided: a distant rainbow in one that suggests fortune, a long journey over, and luck; and storm clouds with skewed perspective in the other, which signals…okay, we didn’t find anything in that one. Still, a rainbow is a good sign, we think.
The Scirocco’s refresh in Geneva next month should hopefully come with a clue or two for we American few, so we’ll let you know what we find out.