It is difficult to overestimate the popularity of cars Volkswagen Golf, which went on sale in 1974. They are among the best-selling, produced in tens of millions of pieces per year. Named after the warm current of the Gulf Stream, these compact cars even became the founders of the so-called golf class.
For many motorists, the name is familiar and recognizable. And few people know that once they had a second name - Rabbit ("rabbit"). Under it, first-generation models were produced in the United States and Canada. And debuting in 2006 at the New York International Auto Show, the fifth generation of the Golf again received this name. By the way, let 2006 not surprise you - yes, in Europe the fifth generation was introduced in 2003, but in the USA it appeared much later. By the way, American models are somewhat different from European ones in terms of their technical characteristics.
Both the very first "Rabbits" and their descendants of the fifth generation carried two emblems - the famous VW logo itself and the image of a running rabbit.
Volkswagen Rabbit, 1977 |
At one time, the name Rabbit appeared as an attempt to play on a simple and memorable name, as was already the case with the famous Beatles (and Golfs were created, first of all, as a replacement for Zhukov). The Americans liked the unusual name very much. To such an extent that some of them even completely forgot the name Volkswagen. However, the rabbit was much less successful in this matter (which cannot be said about the cars themselves) and in 1985, introducing the second generation, the manufacturer decided to abandon it, returning to the name Golf.
Perhaps the reason for this lies in the fact that Beatles outwardly it really looked like a beetle, while the angular Golf least of all resembled a long-eared animal. All the more strange is the company's decision to return to it twenty years later.
However, the decision turned out to be short-lived - at the presentation of the sixth generation Volkswagen again decided to do without rabbits and again in favor of Golf.