Volkswagen ID3 as a colorful Harlekin

In 2021, the Dutch Volkswagen importer came up with the fun idea of ​​introducing a colorful Harlekin edition of the current Polo on Blue Monday – supposedly the most depressing day of the year. With that cheerful party animal, Volkswagen was of course referring to the Polo Harlekin that was presented in 1995, but for which the first plans were already on the table a year earlier. So that was thirty years ago now. This time, that fact is a reason for the Belgian Volkswagen importer to immerse something modern in the Harlekin dip.

Together with the Belgian VW Club, Volkswagen Belgium has produced an electric ID3 in Harlekin colours. The Volkswagen ID3 Harlekin was created a lot more simply than the Polo Harlekin from the nineties. The body parts of that Polo were actually sprayed in a different color. With the ID3 Harlekin we are dealing with an enthusiastically stickered copy.

Fun fact: the Polo was not the only Volkswagen that ever got a Harlekin version. In 1996, Volkswagen introduced a Golf III Harlekin. 286 copies were made, especially for the American and Canadian markets. The better known Polo Harlekin was only delivered in Germany and the United Kingdom. What is that Harlekin Beetle doing in the photos? That is a creation of the Mexican branch of Volkswagen. It introduced its own Harlekin version in 1997 based on the Beetle that it produced until 2002. 141 copies were built.

The Polo Harlekin was intended to illustrate the ‘Baukastensystem’ of the Polo. Volkswagen used colors to indicate, among other things, the engine and chassis (blue), the equipment (yellow), the options (red) and the paint colors (green). Consumers responded positively to the colorful Polo and Volkswagen took the Polo Harlekin into production, initially in a small series of 1,000 units, although 3,806 units ultimately rolled off the production line.

The ID3 Harlekin is rarer than the previous versions mentioned, because there is only one copy.