Start with what the Volkswagen Scirocco is: a 3-door hatchback with Petrol engine, built from 1974 to 2018, as the oil crises and the first emissions rules rewired the industry. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to Giorgetto Giugiaro at Italdesign.
Where it came from
The Volkswagen Scirocco is a sport compact car manufactured and marketed by Volkswagen in two generations from 1974 to 1992 and a third generation from 2008 until 2018. Production of the third generation ended without a successor. It is a three-door hatchback with a front-engine, front-wheel-drive layout. The Scirocco derives its name from the Mediterranean wind.
Under the skin
The engine is Petrol engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. On the scales it comes to 750-875 kg. Drive goes through a 4/5-speed manual / 3-speed automatic. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 2400 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
In context
In the Volkswagen line-up the Volkswagen Scirocco has a clear place: it replaced the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia; the factory was Osnabrück (Karmann), West Germany. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Lamborghini Countach, the Jeep Cherokee, the Mitsubishi Lancer. Nearby in the Volkswagen catalogue sit the Volkswagen Apollo and the Volkswagen Routan.
Owning one today
EPA combined economy is 25 mpg, about $3,300 a year in fuel at the EPA's assumptions. Condition, mileage and specification move any single car a long way from a headline figure.