Recently it became clear that the Volkswagen Multivan is being separated from the Transporter. With some imagination you can therefore say that there will soon be a real, large MPV on the Volkswagen price list. Every reason to look back at the first Volkswagen Sharan, which received a major facelift in 2000 together with its brother Seat Alhambra.
Maybe it’s crazy, but this writer thinks such a first Sharan is pure nostalgia. The car is not even that old, but certainly in its original form completely extinct. In addition, the Volkswagen Sharan is a representative of a vanished car type: the large ‘space car’.
Galaxy
The first Volkswagen Sharan appeared on the market in 1995 in response to the success of the Chrysler Voyager and Renault Espace. Volkswagen did not do this job alone, but worked together with Ford. The result was three new models. Within Volkswagen, the car was joined by the Seat Alhambra, which differed only in detail from the Volkswagen before and after the facelift. In addition, the car appeared on the market as Ford Galaxy. After the facelift in particular, that model took a quite different design-wise path, so we save it for a separate edition of ‘Facelift Friday’.
Everything new
The facelift of the Sharan / Alhambra duo did not lie. As we often see in this column, the fashion at the turn of the century turned out to be very different from that of five years earlier. A complete makeover was therefore needed to prepare these space giants for the turn of the century. The nose was completely overhauled, with new, bright light units made of one piece. The differently shaped lamps were joined by a ditto grille, which also meant that the hood and front screens had to be replaced by redrawn ones.
Even more remarkable is that the back has also been completely repainted. While a different layout of the rear lights is often sufficient to reduce costs, the Sharan and Alhambra were assigned a completely new light cluster. Changes to the rear screen were therefore inevitable, but it did result in a much tighter car. The more rectilinear light clusters were optically connected to each other on the Sharan, but were cut diagonally on both sides of the license plate on the Seat.
Volkswagen dash
We found other important news on the inside in 2000. Where the Sharan and Alhambra were technically really Volkswagen products, the dashboard of the original edition was clearly the responsibility of development partner Ford. That changed with the facelift, when the entire working environment was replaced by a sleeker whole in the style of the then Golf and Passat. The latest editions of these models therefore also look a lot more modern on the inside, but the original model is perhaps more fun. Or not?