Inside The Industry: TTAC Finds The Missing Etymology Of Passat, Golf, Scirocco, Polo

Where did the names of Volkswagen's Passat, Golf, Scirocco, Polo come from? What is their meaning? For four decades, it was shrouded in mystery. Forty years later, a famous former Volkswagen CEO, Dr. Carl Hahn, and his illustrious former sales chief, "WP" Schmidt, help TTAC get to the bottom of an unsolved question,

Some of the worst performers in the truth department are the gossip press and the automotive media. A good deal there simply is phantasy. Knowing well that no-one will complain or check, bogus new product plans are being published. The large-scale availability of cheap 3D rendering software (here is how it's done) and of WordPress turns this disease into a pandemic.

Most of these lies come and go. Some stay and turn into history. A dark chapter of automotive history falsification is about the names of the new generation of cars that, in the early 1970s, rescued Volkswagen from the brink and that helped turn VW into the powerhouse it is today: Passat, Golf, Scirocco, Polo.

There is so munch nonsense written about those names, that we had to go to the very top, and ask the people who decided these names 40 years ago.

Before the Volkswagen Passat came out in 1973, all Volkswagen were sold by the number: VW 1200, VW 1303, VW 1600 and so forth. Then came a car called "Passat." Although nothing was ever officially published, everybody in Germany was convinced that the car was named after the same named trade wind. It had to be.

A year later came two new cars, the Golf, and the Scirocco. The latter is another famous wind. It is called Qibli in Africa, it changes to Scirocco in Italy, and after it crossed the Alps, it is called Föhn and becomes famous for causing headaches and distracted driving in Munich and surroundings.

In Germany, and especially at Volkswagen, everything supposedly goes according to plan and has a system. There was no system announced, so a system was fabricated. Passat, Scirocco: It had to be winds. But where did the Golf fit in?

Even before the Golf appeared, a German auto magazine wrote that the car, following the supposed wind logic, was originally named "Blizzard." According to the report, an Austrian ski manufacturer with the same name they objected, and instead, the car was named Golf. Or so the apocryphal history says. That story has been written in many books and magazines, and it is wrong. If you believe the story, you have been snowed.

A little research in the annals of the German Patent and Markenamt would have shown that, before the Golf arrived, the name "Blizzard" was trademarked for products like floor cleaners, perfume, even for socks. There was no entry for cars. In 1973, there wasn't even one for skis.

The ski trademark was registered half a year after the introduction of the Golf, on October 31, 1974. Most likely by a now highly alarmed Blizzard ski maker, who had not bothered before, and who had read the stories about them allegedly blocking the name for the Golf. What's more, the Blizzard trademark for cars remained up for grabs until 1979, when a company called Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha of Toyota, Aichi, Japan, took the Blizzard trademark in Germany. Yes, that Toyota. The mark was used for a luckless Toyota Blizzard, a small Daihatsu-built pocket Jeep. Toyota abandoned the mark in 2010, if you want Blizzard for a car, you most likely will get it.

After Passat, Golf, and Scirocco came the Polo. Its naming still causes great apprehension: Where is the wind? Future cars by Volkswagen had wind names (Jetta, Santana, Vento, Bora,) therefore, members of the media decided that all Volkswagen cars must have wind names, somehow. This leads to the fact that today, Wikipedia, while citing reliable sources, can claim that "the Golf name is derived from the German word for Gulf Stream and the period in its history when VW named vehicles after prominent winds."

Never mind that a gulf stream is no wind, but an ocean current. According to Wikipedia, the Polo is named "after Polar Winds." The latter is said without sources, but by now, the story of Polo and Polar Wind has been copied so many times that it is very easy to find a polar wind source for Wikipedia, even if it is a circular reference – nobody will find out.

I know it differently. I did every launch campaign, wrote some and supervised the writing of the catalogs (all pictured here) of the four models (and many later), except those for the Passat. That car was already done when I arrived on my job as Volkswagen copywriter in 1973. No system for the name was ever announced, neither officially nor confidentially. The briefing documents said everything about engine, displacement, they espoused the "Negativer Lenkrollradius"- but nothing was said about the etymology of the names. Each car had a name, that was it, we were not supposed to ask where it came from. Never ever did anyone think or even joke about the Golf being named after the Gulf Stream, or the Polo after the Polar Wind. Sure, at the agency we joked about "The new popular sport, Golf." Sure, the GTI had a golf ball as a shifter knob, and plaid seats. Those were puns, no proof of a meaning.

However, who would believe a former copywriter? I decided to go straight to the source. Volkswagen has a great new and well-funded department, Volkswagen Classics. It is responsible for Volkswagen's history. If anyone knows for sure how these names came about, then it's the people in charge of Volkswagen's history.

I asked Eberhard Kittler, spokesman of Volkswagen Classics, whether there was a system to this name madness, whether all Volkswagens of that time were named after winds, or the Golf after the Gulf Stream, or the Polo after the Polar Winds.

Kittler had no idea. That allegedly widely known part of history has no presence in Volkswagen's history department.

Kittler went through the archives, he pulled old internal marketing plans. He found "no conclusive records."

Herr Kittler continued digging. He reached former, long retired members of Volkswagen's sales and Marketing departments. They had never heard of a system, or of any official etymology of these names.

Kittler contacted Dr. Carl Hahn, the famous Volkswagen of America Chief who approved the famous Volkswagen ads of the late 50s and early 60, and who was CEO of Volkswagen from 1982 to 1993. Hahn did not know either. "At that time, I was at Continental, doing tires," Hahn told Kittler. "But if anyone knows, it's WP Schmidt."

WP Schmidt was sales chief at Volkswagen when Passat, Golf, Scirocco, and Polo came, and he was so for 27 years. Schmidt is a living legend at Volkswagen. Matters as important as the naming of a car had to cross his table, and had to be approved by "WP."

Doing research on behalf of TTAC, Hahn contacted Schmidt. "Prof. Hahn asked Schmidt what was behind the names of Polo, Golf, Scirocco and Passat," reported Kittler yesterday. "Schmidt did not know about anything behind the names."

Kittler confirmed that there are many "legends and speculations" about the names, for instance that "Polo could have been a riff on Marco Polo, to hint on Volkswagen's global vision." However, as far as the man in charge of Volkswagen's history is concerned, these explanations came after the fact, and according to the files and witnesses at Volkswagen, there was no system, there only were names.

The quest for a meaning is as powerful as nature's abhorrence of a vacuum. We may have to accept that some things in life are meaningless.