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$100,000 buys these two VW Corrado wagon prototypes

Commissioned by Volkswagen, these are the only two made.

Corrado Magnum
Corrado Magnum / Image Credit: LuxSport
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The Volkswagen Corrado is a sure-fire future classic. The successor to the light and agile Scirocco, the Corrado was a stouter-looking vehicle from every angle – and there were a lot of angles. It was only ever available as a fastback, but these two shooting brake prototypes show the potential left untapped.

When the Corrado was launched in 1988, Volkswagen is said to have commissioned a limited-run production sportwagon. The workshop that took up the work was Marold Automobili GmbH or MAG, and these two "Magnum Sport Kombi" prototypes stand as testament to that project. 200 units were planned to be built, with tooling, wind tunnel testing and German road safety agency paperwork tackled; still, Volkswagen decided to shelve the project, and the two cars became orphaned.

Equipped with Audi tail lights and a glass hatch, the Magnum Corrados certainly look a little odd, but after a while your eye gets used to the lengthened roofline and the shape starts to make sense. They are quite like the "Steilheck" two-door wagon versions of the 1980s-1990s Volkswagen Polo, which was the quintessential grocery getter of Germany; just a little heavier, blockier, and equipped with Volkswagen's eccentric G-Lader supercharger G60 engine with 166 horsepower. One is fitted with a leather interior and glossy fake wood, the other has cloth seats. Both are stick shift.

After the project was abandoned, these two cars were put up for sale for an incredible 3.2 million Deutschmarks. Unsurprisingly, they failed to sell and sat for decades. In 2007, they surfaced on the German used car site mobile.de, a veritable time sink in its own right. The former vice president of the Corrado Club of America, John Kuitwaard was led to the sales ad via the VW forum VWVortex, and managed to save the struggling Corrados from the jaws of crusher. After acquiring the cars – probably for far less than millions – Kuitwaard found that their prototype status prohibited the cars from being US legal; a Show and Display waiver didn't work out as the cars were considered "only Volkswagens" and not special enough. Kuitwaard's only option was to store the cars in the Netherlands and wait until they reached the mature age of 25 years in 2014.

Kuitwaard displayed the cars at the Waterfest 20 event dedicated to watercooled VWs, and the time has come for him to let them go to the next owner. However, prototypes still do not come cheap, and the price assigned to the Magnum Kombi Corrados is a touch under $50,000 per car.

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