THE 1970s were years almost as prolific as the 1950s for producing the DNA building blocks of the cars of 2012, and one highly significant case in point was the Volkswagen Scirocco.

This classy sports coupe was a lead car in driving VW out of the style doldrums into a new and modern world in which the buyer wanted image and performance by the plateful.

Many think that the Scirocco was an offshoot of the Golf and it it true that they were developed alongside each other, but the Scirocco was there first by months.

Volkswagen was trying to find a way forward when the Beetle and all its variants were teetering to the end of their shelf life so it recruited style genius Giugiaro to create a family of cars that would turn heads.

With the typical Giugiaro folded paper looks, the Scirocco was a hit, to such as extent that there is a car bearing that name on the roads today.

The name derives from the Italian word for the Sirocco wind. It was a time when Volkswagen named vehicles after prominent winds, including Passat, Polo after the Polar wind, Jetta after the Jet Stream and Golf after the Gulf Stream.

It is amazing that there are still so many who think that the Golf and Polo are named after the sports.

Built in the Karmann factory at Osnabruck, the Scirocco drove off the line in 1974 as a replacement for the old Karmann Ghia coupe.

It is claimed that the Scirocco was launched before the high volume Golf hatchback in case there were any reliability or design issues, but I certainly cannot remember any. Mark I models featured a range of four-cylinder engines with the UK getting 1500 and 1600 models.

It was greeted in the UK as a radical departure for VW and the loyal customers who were used to Beetles and Variants really did do a double take.

But the Scirocco soon became a car of the image conscious and it caught on big style in the coupe market.

Build quality was high but after some years rust did get a grip on a large number of unprotected and neglected cars

It changed little before being replaced by the Mark 2 version in 1982 which was heavily redesigned to move with the times, featuring a raft of improvements.

The real icing on the cake for the Scirocco is the fact that it is back with us after a break as a modern coupe proudly bearing the name of the wild and wilful wind on which it has ridden down the decades.