A super cool Volkswagen Citi Golf CLX, seen on a snowy winter’s day in 2009 in the faraway Tongzhou District in east Beijing, capital of China. The good Volkswagen stood parked on a corner near a public gym, complete with two table-tennis tables! That day, nobody was playing.
Beijing could be very cold even until 2009. There was still quite a lot of snow every winter and temperatures could go down to -15 Celsius at night. Try to find that today! It just isn’t happening anymore. Blame climate change!
Those millions of new cars on China’s endless roads, every year, may heat things up quite a lot more. But hey, new cars got folks out of their villages, right? That’s worth something too, is it not?
The Volkswagen Citi Golf was a China-only creation. It was based on the first generation Seat Cordoba (1993-2002). It was made in China from 1995 until 2001 by FAW-Volkswagen. The base model was powered by a 1.4 with 59 hp and 107 Nm, good for a claimed top speed of 130 km/h. Price started around 240.000 yuan in 1995.
Lot to see here! Left to right: Najing-Fiat Palio sedan, Tianjin-Xiali TJ7100 sedan, and a FAW-Volkswagen Jetta. Snow was getting bigger then!
The car that I saw that day in Tonzhou was in a perfect shape. Totally original including the rear spoiler and the, for that time, rather fashionable rear-wide rear-light unit. Note the tiny VW-badge above the license plate.
This is the FAW-Volkswagen badge. 一汽 (Yiqi) is short for ‘First Auto’, in turn short for First Auto Works (FAW). 大众 (Dazhong) is the Chinese name of Volkswagen.
This is the Citi Golf badge, and the Chinese name is unusually long. Here we go: 都市 高尔夫. The first part 都市(Dushi) means city. The English name was spelled as ‘Citi’ instead of ‘City’, a marketing thingy, but the name was rarely used. The second part 高尔夫(Gao’erfu) is the Chinese name for (Volkswagen) Golf. This name, a phonetic translation, is used on the China-made Golf until today.
And that is the end of this story. I got cold too and went inside, where beer awaited. Many more stories to tell, many more stories to come.
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