After 33 years Volkswagen just produced its last VR6 engine

The VR6 engine enjoys legendary status among many South African Volkswagen fans, and is best known for powering the flagship Golf and Jetta models in the 1990s.

The VR6 powered a wide variety of vehicles in the Volkswagen Group stable, and after 33 years in production, the very last version of this narrow-angle six-cylinder engine rolled off an assembly line in China, where it powered the Volkswagen Talagon and Audi Q6, Motor1 reports.

The VR6 was first introduced in 1991, and besides the flagship Golf and Jetta 3 models, it also powered the Corrado Coupe as well as the Passat, while the new millennium saw it slot neatly beneath the bonnet of the first-generation Touareg and even Porsche’s Cayenne.

But arguably its finest moments were in the Golf 4 and Golf 5 R32 (3.2-litre) performance models, producing up to 184kW, and let’s not forget the mighty Passat R36 featuring a 3.6-litre version of the VR6 with 221kW.

The VR6 featured in various European models until 2015, and also powered the US market Atlas SUV until 2023, before being confined to the aforementioned Chinese vehicles until December 2024.

But it’s the 2.8-litre VR6 in the Golf and Jetta 3 that South Africans will remember most fondly. Though somewhat expensive, it was a fitting flagship for the Golf range after the GTI 16-valve departed from our market, and with 128kW on tap it was quite a firecracker at the time.

The VR6 engine also hit the headlines in 2018 when an enthusiast managed to shoehorn a 225kW 3.6-litre VR6 engine into a South African Citi Golf, and the car was proudly shown off at the Wörthersee festival in Germany.

What made the VR6 engine unique was its extremely narrow cylinder bank angle of 10 to 15 degrees, which made it more compact than an inline six but cheaper to build than a traditional V6, since a single cylinder head could be used for all six cylinders.

Bidding farewell to it on his LinkedIn page this week, Volkswagen’s communications manager in Wolfsburg, Andreas G. Schleith, revealed that almost 1.87 million VR6 engines had been produced during its 33 year production cycle.

“Introduced at the Geneva Motor Show in 1991, the VR6 revolutionized engine design, combining the compactness of an inline (4-cyl) engine with the power and torque of a V6,” Schleith said.

“From powering the Atlas, Bora, CC, Corrado, Eos, Golf, New Beetle, Passat, Phaeton, Touareg to the Porsche Cayenne, and even Winnebago RVs, this engineering marvel left its mark across the globe. A heartfelt thank-you to the teams who made this legend possible. The VR6 may be retiring, but its legacy roars on.” 

IOL