This Factory Golf Came With Four-Wheel Drive and a Spare Wheel Hanging Off the Back

The Volkswagen Golf Country was a raised, four-wheel-drive version of the Mk2 Golf, produced in 1990 and 1991. It combined a familiar hatchback body with extra ground clearance and protective equipment for rougher roads. 

A Golf with a spare wheel mounted on the back tends to make people stop and look. The body is familiar enough. Then you notice the daylight beneath it, the protective bars and the swing-away wheel carrier, and wonder who has been busy in a workshop.

Volkswagen sold it that way.

The Country grew out of the Montana concept, which tested public interest in a Golf that could venture farther off the tarmac. The response was encouraging enough for production to begin in April 1990. 

Starting with the four-wheel-drive Golf Syncro gave the project a useful foundation. Specialist firm Steyr-Daimler-Puch handled the conversion in Austria, turning the ordinary-looking hatchback into something considerably taller. The transformation included underbody protection and the conspicuous spare-wheel carrier at the rear. 

Its proportions remain the best part. A Mk2 Golf has a compact, upright shape that becomes oddly endearing when lifted away from the road. There is enough familiar family-car bodywork to make the rugged equipment look faintly improbable.

The alterations served a purpose, though. Four-wheel drive helps a car find traction, while clearance determines what it can pass over without scraping underneath. The Country addressed both. That still left sensible limits: a lifted Golf required the same judgement about terrain, tyres and available grip as any other vehicle.

Volkswagen now describes it as an early hint of the SUVs that followed. Looking back, the ingredients are recognizable: everyday hatchback convenience, a higher stance and the promise of reaching somewhere a little more remote. 

A surviving example deserves a careful inspection beneath the interesting accessories. The conversion-specific hardware matters, particularly if pieces have disappeared or been replaced during decades of use. A buyer should establish what belongs to the car before assuming every missing bracket will be easy to source.

The rear carrier is worth trying, too. Swing it aside, open the hatch and see how the arrangement works in practice. It is an extra step in an otherwise familiar routine, and a reminder that Volkswagen took this small Golf’s outdoor ambitions surprisingly seriously.