Tested: 1990 Volkswagen Tri Star Synchro Is a Different Kind of Forbidden Fruit

From the April 1990 issue of Car and Driver.

The Volkswagen Tri Star Syncro project car is terrific news for sports-car fans: it will do absolutely everything that your Porsche 944 Cabriolet will not do.

This special VW Vanagon can carry a small motorcycle, a heap of exanimate game animals, or a load of pressure-treated decking and still have room for five adults—with enough elbowroom between them for a square dance. Its full-time four-wheel-drive system, complete with a tractor-pulling first gear, enables it to climb off-road hills like a billy goat. A clever storage area, hidden under the rear bench seat and the pickup bed, will swallow and hide the contents of a small Samsonite store. And the body’s Guard’s Red paint job will grab the attention of the most jaded parking valet.

Now for the bad news. The Tri Star you see here is a one-of-a-kind, built in a special-job shop in Volkswagen’s Hannover, West Germany, factory. (The Hannover facility also assembles ambulances, buses for the handicapped, tow trucks, and cherry pickers on the Vanagon chassis.) The Tri Star is not sold in the U.S., nor does Volkswagen U.S. have any plans to sell it here.

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“We don’t see a market for the Tri Star at the price we’d have to charge for it,” says Skip Redman, Volkswagen U.S.’s Vanagon chief. Because the Tri Star would fall under the current 25-percent truck-import duty and because each vehicle would have to be expensively hand-assembled in Hannover and at four-wheel-drive specialist Steyr-DaimlerPuch in Austria, the asking price in the U.S. would likely hover in the $35,000-40,000 range.

Imagine Volkswagen dealers in the United States trying to market a Vanagon that costs as much as four Jettas, while also having to stock replacement parts for the few vehicles they could sell. “We don’t want to do business like Lotus or Ferrari,” Redman says. As a result, the Tri Star will probably remain a one-off cosmetic showcase.

Europeans can’t buy the Tri Star either, but they can get a machine that looks a lot like one. Of the roughly 130,000 Type II (Vanagon) vehicles Volkswagen builds each year, about half feature the Tri Star’s “double-cab” pickup body style. The base double-cab Type II sells for less than $18,000 in Germany. The standard, van-body Type II—called the Transporter in the Fatherland—sells for about $1400 less than that, which is actually more than what U.S. buyers pay for a base Vanagon.

Based on the double-cab Type II, the Tri Star is upgraded with a first-class stereo system, a sunroof, BBS wheels, a Porsche-grade paint job, and a comfy cloth interior that looks as if it came straight out of an Audi. Electric windows and mirrors are also included; power locks couldn’t be designed to fit in the two square rear doors.

You’d have to look long and hard to find a European Type II dressed out this well. Currently, about 80 percent of the Type IIs VW builds are bought for commercial use only. Recently, however, passenger versions like the U.S. Vanagon have been selling well in Germany, which has only lately discovered the virtues of minivans. That’s a curious trend: Volkswagen has been building minivans since 1949, and both the Transporter and the double-cab pickup version have been around since 1979.

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Powered by a water-cooled, 2.1-liter flat four-cylinder that produces 90 horsepower, the blocky Tri Star reaches a top speed of only 78 mph—hardly enough to merit even a glance from some Western state troopers. (That, of course, is the job of your 944.) The Tri Star needs more than eighteen seconds to reach 60 mph, which is about a second slower than the two-wheel-drive Vanagon we tested last May. (Because the four-wheel-drive Tri Star lacks the extra glass and roof metal of a passenger Vanagon, it weighs only 30 pounds more than a two-wheel-drive Vanagon CL Wolfsburg Edition.) The 2.1-liter engine makes characteristic Beetle noises, but they are distant and don’t intrude on the cabin.

The manual transmission has five forward gears, but for normal paved-road driving you need to use only the top four. First gear gets you to 13 mph at the engine’s 5500-rpm redline, and second (which you use to start from a stop in normal driving) moves the Tri Star to a whopping 17 mph. In top gear on the highway, the engine turns at 3700 rpm at 65 mph. Passing other cars requires so much planning that you almost need a Day-Timer.

The Tri Star’s suspension, independent all around, is tuned to soak up off-road bumps without producing a trucklike ride on the Interstate. The suspension’s well-balanced combination of compliance, control, and travel makes the Tri Star easy to drive and comfortable to ride in. It corners precisely and confidently—remarkable for a vehicle that looks like a miniature fire truck.

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Off road, the Tri Star is surprisingly agile for its size. Ground clearance is higher than in such front-drive minivans as the Plymouth Voyager and the Chevy Lumina APV, so the Tri Star would have no trouble reaching your favorite deep-woods hunting blind. And thanks to the Tri Star’s high seating position, visibility is excellent: you can see over the tops of Chevy Astro minivans and look passing truckers in the eye.

Volkswagen built the Tri Star Syncro to showcase the Vanagon’s versatility and style potential, and we think the result is neat. After all, what other pickup truck can challenge a Range Rover off road and draw as many curious stares as a Mazda Miata?