Volkswagen entered the World Rally Championship in 1978 using various specifications of the Golf, competing until 1990. The team won the WRC manufacturers' championship in 1979 but ultimately could not sustain a competitive program as the sport's technical demands escalated into the Group B era.
Volkswagen returned to factory-backed motorsport through the Dakar Rally, entering a Tarek 2WD buggy in 2003. The team progressed through successive generations of the Race Touareg, with Giniel de Villiers finishing second in 2006 and the team claiming three consecutive Dakar wins in 2009, 2010, and 2011 with de Villiers, Carlos Sainz, and Nasser Al-Attiyah respectively. After claiming the 2011 victory, Volkswagen withdrew from cross-country competition.
Volkswagen began preparing for a WRC return using S2000-specification Škoda Fabias in 2011, entering four rallies including Rally Finland and Wales Rally GB. In November 2011, the team announced a multi-year contract with Sébastien Ogier and co-driver Julien Ingrassia. For 2012, Volkswagen conducted a near-full WRC campaign with Škoda Fabias as a development exercise, with Ogier driving every round and Andreas Mikkelsen and Kevin Abbring sharing the second car. Mikkelsen became the first S2000 driver to score Power Stage points at the 2012 Rallye Deutschland.
Volkswagen entered as a fully-fledged manufacturer team from the start of the 2013 season with the Polo R WRC. Ogier and Jari-Matti Latvala formed the core lineup, with Andreas Mikkelsen joining from Portugal under a secondary "Volkswagen Motorsport II" registration to maximize testing time. The season began with Ogier winning in Sweden — the team's first WRC victory with the World Rally Car — before following up in Mexico. Ogier won the 2013 drivers' championship, and Volkswagen took the manufacturers' title.
The pattern continued with remarkable consistency. Ogier claimed the drivers' championship in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016, and the team won the manufacturers' title in all four seasons. The 2016 season proved the program's final chapter: just days after the Wales Rally GB, Volkswagen announced its withdrawal from the WRC at the end of the season. The decision came as a surprise given that extensive development of a 2017-specification Polo was already underway, and was widely linked to the reputational and financial consequences of Volkswagen's emissions scandal.
Volkswagen returned to the WRC in 2018 with an R5-specification Polo GTI, making its debut at Rally Catalunya with Petter Solberg and Eric Camilli. The program was modest and short-lived. In November 2019, Volkswagen announced the end of all internal combustion engine-based motorsport activities, consistent with a corporate shift toward electric vehicle manufacturing.
Volkswagen Motorsport's 2013–2016 WRC program delivered four consecutive doubles in drivers' and manufacturers' championships, one of the most concentrated championship runs in the series' history. The Polo R WRC combined technical precision with a driver of Ogier's caliber to produce a campaign that rivals Citroën's Loeb-era dominance in its completeness. The team's withdrawal in 2016, driven by factors external to motorsport, left the program without a natural endpoint on track.