Matt Prior
One would think Volkswagen had learnt from its last April Fools’ Day misstep, when it spent the later days of March 2021 telling the world that it was going to rebrand itself as Voltswagen, even reassuring dubious enquirers – all before 1 April, remember, which isn’t how this is meant to work – that this was definitely the case. The later rug pull didn’t go down very well.
It was a wheeze that broke all of my three guiding tenets for corporations doing April Fools’ Day japes. The first one is ‘don’t’, the second is ‘no, really, don’t’ and the third is to sigh and accept that, if they must, it has to be done brilliantly: only just implausible and witty and clever enough that people will admire it even while they’re seeing through it.
Crucially, nobody should feel like a corporation is actively mocking their desires or stupidity.
BMW had a tradition of newspaper adverts that featured not-quite-believable new technology: prescription windscreens, a wiper for the badge, a self-cleaning car. Ultimately, everyone was in on the joke, and it was quite a good one.
Which brings me to this year, and again to late March (again not how it works), and Volkswagen not learning from its past mistakes. This year, Volkswagen told the public that it was going to bring back Harlequin panels on its ID 3, using electroluminescent paint.
You might remember Harlequins from Volkswagens Polo and Golf past. They had body panels rendered in different colours. Initially made to demonstrate the Mk3 Polo’s options, the look went down so well they put some into production. A later Golf was also built in limited numbers and there’s a strong cult following for these classic Harlequin models today.
Imagine the disappointment for those enthusiasts, then, when it turned out that what was actually quite a sweet idea – to brighten up the homogeneous ID 3 with heritage-based fun – was indeed an April Fools’ gag of the lowest order: one that genuinely raises people’s hopes, only to dash them, so that the perpetrator appears mean yet also unambitious. As if we would make something fun like that, guys!
Step forward also Subaru of New England, which created a rendering of the BRZ Wilderness, a sports coupé with a raised ride height and hardware “to turn the trails into the
