VW Golf
The Volkswagen Golf is an historically-important model of automobile that began production in 1974. Marketed in the United States for about a decade as the Volkswagen Rabbit, it featured the water-cooled, front transverse-engine, front-wheel-drive design pioneered by the Mini with the addition of a hatchback, revolutionizing small car design and manufacture.While the Golf was not the first design with this layout (that honour going to the Fiat 128 3P of the early 1970s), it was the first to be truly successful in the mass market, and it was this, rather than the Fiat, that was widely copied by others.
The Golf was designed by Italian automobile architect Giorgetto Giugiaro, of the Ital design studio.
The GTi version, launched in 1977, created a whole new genre and market of car - the hot hatchback, and was widely copied by all other manufacturers since.
Four generations of the original Golf model have been built so far, with the 5th standing in line to follow in late 2003.
