By the late eighties Volkswagen was running out of tricks. The lineup was aging, the GTI glow was fading, and Wolfsburg needed something with a pulse. The Corrado was supposed to be that pulse, but behind the main program Volkswagen quietly commissioned something stranger. Three coachbuilt Corrado design studies were ordered for the 1989 Geneva Motor Show, each from a different builder, each testing how far the platform could be pushed.
All three were shown. Only one can be accounted for today. The SGS built Corrado Cabriolet is that survivor, a fully engineered prototype that behaves like something Volkswagen intended to sell rather than a momentary display piece. As Alex puts it, “Everything works. It works well.”
The owner, Alex, is an unlikely steward. Before collecting unusual cars, he chased horses. “I had always wanted to be a jockey,” he says. His parents pushed him into a traditional job. He did it, built a stable life, then walked away. He lost weight, trained, earned a jockey’s license, and moved to Maryland to ride steeplechase. That left little time for car events, so he collected what he calls “contemplate cars,” machines with stories rather than utility. This Corrado was exactly that.
Styling Garage Schenefeld, better known as SGS, was a German coachbuilder based near Hamburg and known in the eighties for its high detail Mercedes conversions, bespoke interiors, and low volume prototype work. Their reputation for engineering complete, functional one offs made them an unusual but fitting choice for this project.
SGS started with a standard Euro market Corrado and cut deep. The roof came off. Structural reinforcement went in. The entire convertible system, from the hard boot to the hydraulics to the control unit, was made specifically for this chassis. “The hard boot, the top mechanism, the hydraulics, the computer that runs it is all one off,” Alex says. Even the quarter glass exists nowhere else.
Inside, nothing resembles a production Corrado. The cabin is trimmed entirely in Magnolia Connolly leather, including the gauge binnacle. “It is upholstered in Connolly leather in a color Rolls Royce says is Magnolia,” Alex explains. Volkswagen never built anything like it before or after.
The exterior color is another one off. The car left the factory in plain black before SGS overlaid it with a custom blue metal flake. “This color was developed for this car. It is the only time it’s ever been used,” he says. In some light it reads gray. In others it flashes sharp blue. Even the 16 by 8 body color wheels remain exactly as they appeared at Geneva.
Mechanically it runs the early G60 supercharged four cylinder, the powertrain available during the development of the design study. It predates the VR6 that would later define the production Corrado. Performance was not the point. The goal was to see whether Volkswagen could climb into a higher segment without losing its identity.
Then the math landed. “They realized it would cost vastly more than a Porsche 924 to build, and nobody was going to buy this instead of a Porsche,” Alex says. That ended it. The design studies faded out of view. Only this one resurfaced decades later after a long stay in the Volkswagen Museum in Wolfsburg. The other two remain unaccounted for, likely buried deep in the archives or lost when their builders disappeared.
What remains is a single car built at the moment Volkswagen let itself imagine something far above its segment. A one off answer to a question the company only asked once, built in metal, shown briefly, and then set aside.
