A product of VW's Simi Valley, California, design studio, the Microbus was the second retro exercise to capture the public's imagination, coming hot on the heels of the New Beetle. Sporting the mad, stubby nose and enormous VW badge that endeared the original to hippies and broke college students alike, the front of the Microbus covered a thoroughly modern 3.2-liter VR6 and five-speed automatic. Unlike the upcoming Volkswagen Routan, which is a tarted-up Chrysler minivan (the staff at VW's headquarters has taken to calling it the "Chroutan"), the company's 2001 rewriting of its old buses managed to combine utility with a nostalgic promise of adventure and discovery; the very same qualities that made buyers eschew their minivans for SUVs in the early '90s.

When Ford introduced its 2001 Explorer Sport Trac — essentially a less utilitarian version of its Explorer SUV with limited rear passenger room and a nearly useless bed — the company didn't expect it to be a volume player. But as waiting lists for Sport Tracs ballooned to three months or more, Ford realized that its bedded SUV was a smash hit. What isn't generally remembered is that Volkswagen had beaten the Sport Trac to the punch with the Advanced Activity Concept, a light-duty pickup based on the initial designs of its Touareg SUV. Using preproduction Touareg front-end and interior pieces, the AAC not only had a short utility bed like the Explorer, it also foretold the use of buttressed rear pillar rails like those that arrived on GM's SUV halfling, the 2002 Chevrolet Avalanche. VW's press release for the truck crows that, "[The AAC] resembles no existing vehicle in this market segment," and had it been put into production, VW could have indeed had the drop on our domestic automakers.

When it wasn't busy deciding that the American market needed glass-bottomed Phaetons or diesels that ran on pelican piss, Volkswagen's "Moonraker" product think-thank turned out some interesting spins on transportation, the greatest of which was the three-wheeled GX3. Powered by an off-the-shelf, 1.6-liter Volkswagen four-cylinder engine mounted inside a tubular steel spaceframe, the GX3 promised motorcycle-like maneuverability with passenger-car stability, all while zipping to 60 in less than 5.7 seconds and returning 46 miles per gallon. Perhaps most attractive was the price: The official line was that if the GX3 were to land in showrooms, it would cost less than $17,000.

Our sister site VWvortex drove the Polo BlueMotion, VW's current mileage champion, earlier this year. But what about those of us who wanted a larger car than the little runabout? VW answered that question at the 2008 Geneva Auto Salon this with the Golf TDI Hybrid. Mating a 1.2-liter, 74-horsepower TDI engine to a 27-horsepower electric motor and a seven-speed twin-clutch transmission, the TDI hybrid could not only drive around in full-electric mode like a Prius, it would also return 69 miles per gallon in a combined city and highway driving cycle. Between the tiny diesel, large electric motor, and improved aerodynamics — even the wheels were designed to let air slip over them without turbulence — the Golf hybrid would have showed that even if VW was late to the hybrid party, it was still poised to make one hell of an entrance. Unfortunately, Volkswagen has cited cost issues as to why the TDI Hybrid is now officially stillborn.

The third-generation Jetta did away with the two-door version of Volkswagen's trunked intermediate, but as the fourth-generation car neared its European launch the model was seemingly reborn with the CJ ("Coupe Jetta") concept. Imagine buyers' surprise, then, to discover the new Jetta was available only as a sedan and, later, a wagon. The CJ proved to stick in the VW scene's collective memory so well that, when the fourth-generation Jetta and Golf were launched in the United States, Florida-based 1552 Design took one half of each car and grafted them together to create "Project X", a now-famous replica of the show-circuit original.

An early precursor to the modern hybrid, the Volkswagen Chico combined a two-cylinder, 34-horsepower gas engine with an electric assist motor to give the small city car a top speed of 81 mph. Like the modern VW up! family of concepts, the Chico was designed to reconnect with the roots of the classic air-cooled Beetle. In this case, its styling contains no hard edges — just radii and arcs that create a smooth body envelope. Its front doors, in particular, are worth noticing: Their double-hinged action moves the doors out laterally before letting them pivot, making it easier to enter the car in a tight parking spot. The Chico could have positioned Volkswagen at the forefront of microcars years before Mercedes and Swatch teamed up to lose money on Smart.

Volkswagen made splashes — and the Guinness Book or World Records — in 2000 when its Lupo 3L returned 100 miles per gallon. But it could have taken the market by storm nearly two decades earlier if it had produced the appropriately named Auto 2000. Based on a Golf chassis with a lightweight body on top of it, the Auto 2000 used a direct-injection, three-cylinder diesel coupled through an overrunning clutch that would let the engine shut off while coasting. When the throttle was reapplied, the clutch would snap the engine back to life, mating it to the spinning drive wheels. The Auto 2000 didn't set the world on fire with its meager 45 horsepower, but its sleek, grille-less profile gave it a top speed of 93 mph — nearly 40 mph higher than the federal speed limit at the time.

Porsche and Volkswagen are engaged in a tug-of-war to claim ownership rights for the Tapiro, a 1970 show car with four gullwing doors — two for the passengers and two for the cargo hold — based on the VW-Porsche 914/6. The Tapiro was designed by Giorgio Giugiaro, who had recently discovered his ability to draw the wedge-shaped supercar and promptly ran the leitmotif into the ground while creating a generation of fodder for Trapper Keeper covers. But the first, and arguably the genesis of a lineage that includes the DeTomaso Mangusta to the Lotus Esprit, could have been a Volkswagen. In a strange twist of fate, the Tapiro didn't survive much beyond its 1970 debut. The show car was sold to a Spanish industrialist in 1972, who used it as his daily driver for a while until a group of labor activists engaged in the time-honored European tradition of anarchistic demolition and planted a bomb under the Tapiro. The burnt shell was repurchased by Italdesign and put on display in its Giugiaro Museum.