Volkswagen’s narrow-angle V6 has been axed after 34 years in production.
After a three-decade run across countless VW models from the iconic Corrado coupe to the more family friendly Atlas SUV (at least here in the U.S.), the VR6 era is officially over. Weirdly, we didn’t actually hear about it through some vocal ad campaign or even a formal press release, but instead through a LinkedIn post by communications manager Andreas Schleith. As of December 12 and nearly 1.87 million engines, he says, it’s all over.
The engine first launched in 1991 in the Passat sedan, but really made its splash in the Corrado coupe, which has become a classic and remarkably collectible today. The VR6 also made its way into three generations of the Volkswagen Golf (including the Golf R32 in the early 2000s) and scores of other models across the Volkswagen and Audi brands. The “R” part of VR6 is derived from the German word Reihenmotor and alludes to its unique configuration — effectively combining some traits of a conventional V6 with an inline engine, where the narrower “V” angle could use a single cylinder head gasket and its compact layout could fit into smaller four-cylinder applications (like the Golf and Beetle, for example).
In the U.S., we mainly saw the VR6 engine live on in the Atlas SUV, until VW pulled it out of the market in 2023. The company last used it in an actual car with the 2018 Passat GT (shown above), before nixing that model in America too. These days, virtually every Volkswagen model packs a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine, or an even smaller 1.5-liter mill, rather than the now-classic VR6 option.
With the VR6’s passing, I suspect some of the more iconic variants are about to get much more valuable. Clean Corrados are already headed skyward thanks to their classic status, while others like the Mk4 and Mk5 Golf R32 will likely build value after now that the VR6 is officially dead. Most of us may just take a moment of silence, but if you’re a real die-hard fan, you may want to pick one up before they get crazily expensive.
