For a 24 year old interior that looks really good.
Better than the interior on my 86 Golf, that's for sure.

A former girlfriend bought a Rabbit, then asked me to teach her how to drive it - she couldn't handle a manual trans. The Rabbit was pretty forgiving, and she got better and better - especially after I taught her that when shifting down at a stop, all the other gears were optional.

"You can take it straight to first, honey."
"Someone said not to do that."
"Not if you're moving, no. Then you just go down one gear at a time."
"What happens if I skip a gear while moving?"
"You get to buy a new car."

I'm not sure if she fully believed that, but she did watch how I drove the car, and drove it like that.

It was an okay car. Not great, not awful, just okay. But it'd be nice to have MPG numbers like that again.

This was my kid's first car--or near enough. Our "Wolfsburg" edition was mostly vinyl and plastic inside. Pushed it more miles than I ever rode in it. Had to replace everything, including wiper motors and eventually the engine. Favorite wiring story: driving down road with kid, electrical smelling smoke starts boiling out from under dash--gets worse--we pull over and sprint up embankment to await flames and/or explosion; time passes, smoke dissipates. Cautiously approach; start engine; drive away like it never happened.

I saw a brand new rabbit and an '8X rabbit sitting on the street in Cincinnati. They were parallel parked right in a row I took a cellhphone pic. Now would be a good time to share it. I thought it was a cool little scene

Oh, and favorite mechanic story: Rabbit quit on a main drag. We pick up piece of car that fell out when it stopped. Kid and I push it up to a car repair place. Guy watches us push it up to him. We explain car stopped, part fell out. He said, in all seriousness, "You want me to look in there and find out what's wrong and fix it?" I had to restrain myself--every Mad Magazine "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" I'd ever read flashed through my brain.

@Novaload: I had something like that happen on my Civic. The acrid smell was horrible. I expected everything electrical to stop at the same time or the dashboard to light up like a Christmas tree.

Nothing happened. Turned out there was a plastic garbage bag caught in the header. How it got there, I have no idea.

My first car was a rabbit. A 1977 diesel transplanted to gas. If you ever tried to use a VW carb for anything you know your in for a long and arduous waste of time. I was able to cobble a chevette carb onto the vw motor and it seemed to run quite well. Well as in 130kmh in a 30 zone well. Handling wasn't bad but not near good enough to stay on the road trying to make a 30kmh bend at 130. 4.5 rolls later and quite a distance from the road. Said rabbit died. Not to worry I bought another one this time a 1982 gti. 11 speeding tickets later and quite a few other violations I sold it. I really loved those cars. They were great on fuel and were tonnes of fun to drive. Even after jumping the car and using trident gum to seal up the hole in the oil pan it still worked fine.

@FLB: At least you found the cause. We never did and concluded the Rabbit was probably possessed.

My dad had an old Rabbit Diesel for a while. It's the car I learned to drive in.

If you think 74 horses is low, the diesel only had 57. It did get close to 50 MPG on the highway though.

Water leaks around the cowl caused many electrical problems on some Rabbits. The shift linkage grew vague with use too, which could make first gear pretty elusive when trying to return to it. Still, these were the last VWs that were somewhat close to being worth what Volkswagen sold them for.

This comes from the mid-point in VW's Crazy American Factory Adventure. Note various shades of color decomposition re: interior components (velour upholstery!), dorky square headlights, full width taillights and other Amerifications. One trim level up and you'd find whitewalls and wheel covers straight off a Cutlass Supreme. It also drove like a squishy American subcompact, with compromised shocks and suspension settings.

By '87 things had gone from worse to very, very worse; the Germans packed up and left 'cause this transplant thing would NEVER work.

Sadly, the '88 models coming off the line towards the end were actually pretty good cars, thoroughly de-Malibued and now called Golfs. But Americans had sworn off hatchbacks and moved on to the next big thing: SUVs!

I had an '83 Rabbit. No radio, no a/c. Broken heater. Heck, this one shown has a side-view mirror adjuster thingy - mine didn't.

I liked that car.

Thank you! My '78 rabbit is a very reliable car, save for a mysterious hard start now and then. It's quick and fun around town, but even with a manual, getting on the freeway is a bit hairy.

I had an '86 Cabriolet with a GTI motor in it. It would've been the most fun car I'd ever owned if it weren't an automatic.

It still putters along for my sister, that was her birthday present this year.

Never thought you'd do a writeup on a Rabbit on DOTS.

I had a '76 Rabbit for a while; got if for the cost of a few parts from a friend when I was really down on my luck. "If you can get it running and drive it out of the tree grove, it's yours."

Once I got it home (driving at night with my wife right behind me to keep the cops from seeing the tags that expired 3 years previous) I set to cleaning it out. Pulled the front floor mats out, and a sizable chunk of floorpan with it. Brakes were pretty soft too, and when I asked a buddy for some help in patching the floors, he asked why I'd want to get rid of the Flintstone brakes when the others didn't work so great.

Also, the guy I got if from didn't have a key for it, so we ripped the lock out of the ignition and used a stubby screwdriver to turn it on & off & start it. One day I was driving it to work and hit a bump (did I mention the bouncy rear shocks?) and heard the stubby screwdriver fall to the floor. No big deal, I thought; I'll just pick it up when I get to work. But it had found another hole in the floor and was gone. I had to go inside to the maintenance shop to borrow a screwdriver to shut my car off.

I drove that thing for about 2 years without sticking much more than $100 into it, then sold it for $250. One of the best cars I ever had.

The best thing about these cars (as well as the Scirocco) was that if you took a tight turn fast enough, the inside rear wheel would lift off the ground. (Kind of like a dog at a fire hydrant.)

I drove a friend's 78 Rabbit diesel once on the highway. He warned me not to try to pass anybody, but I didn't listen, and boy was I sorry. That car was as slow as a slug.

My '81 2-door gas-powered Rabbit was freedom in grad school - got me my first date with the woman I married. Broke students, South Side of Chicago, I could drive her to the Indian restaurants on the North Side, on Devon Street. The bondo on the front didn't bother her, she wanted to escape Hyde Park.

Great winter car. On 10 below mornings, I could reach in through the door, turn the key, and it started every time, without touching the gas. Gave me time to scrape the ice off, then the mighty front wheel drive got us out of any snowbank.

Had a regular junk yard that I went to for door handles. Broke 2 or 3 every winter because the rubber door seal would freeze solid.

Had to replace the water pump twice. Got fed up with that and other nagging expensive rubber parts decaying, like the fuel filler neck.

Had a brown 77 diesel that I used to deliver pizza in college. 55 mpg average back when diesel was under a buck a gallon. :) That car was the cheapest to own of my life. Never spent a penny on it save fuel and duct tape. 500 miles a week delivering pizza paid .21 a mile for gas, hell yeah! I never changed the oil, I ran knobby snow tires year round, and I don't recall ever washing it. The little vent windows were duct taped to stop whistling and leaking. There was also duct tape applied as necessary to cover rust through holes. I loved the smoke screen a la Spy Hunter when you dropped a gear and floored it. No acceleration, but black smoke galore. I mean BLACK smoke, no visible headlights for a full second. The only downside to the car was if you forgot to plug it in at night in the winter you were in for at least an hour wait to start it.

Interior shots too!

A nice original looking example like this one reminds me just how much of a rip off the fat Dodge Omni really was.
[i.cnn.net]

@monkeyboy04:
@mobilene:
My folks' '73 MBZ 220D was rated at 62hp; at least they specified the four-speed manual trannie. None to be found in SoCal, so they had to special-order. This meant a three-month delay, but allowed them to de-option heavily: roll-your-own windows, MB-Tex vinyl seats, but keep the A/C. And of course they could pick their choice of color inside and out.

I learned to drive in that car, and they kept it for 25 years.

Sorry, square-headlight Rabbits in that color can only remind me of one thing.. Pole Position! [www.youtube.com]

I saw a '79 Golf LS on the motorway yesterday,

I thought non-GTI Mk1 Golfs were extinct in the UK...

Reminds me of my 1983 VW Jetta Mk I, and mine had the Automatic as well. Even though you would think this thing was a slug, the car I traded in on the Jetta was the real slug, a 1980 Mustang Ghia, with the 200 CI Straight Six, and an Automatic.... Ugh.

I liked it better than the Pennsylvania Built Rabbits of this era. It was during this time that VW tried to "Malibuize" the Rabbit, with color keyed interiors so that they didn't feel so "foreign". They started making the Rabbits in Mexico soon afterwards.

I had an '81 Rabbit convertible (before they called them Cabrio's) with a gas motor/5 speed in it. It would do the 3 wheel motion in a tight turn, my HS buddies used to follow me to school to watch me do it. Pretty fast too, but always smelled like clutch.

Diesel Rabbits in good shape regularly sell for around 4K on eBay, they're the hot ticket for bio-diesel hippies right now.

Charles-Barrett, I actually have a '73 220D, 4 speed car with crank-ups, MBtex and A/C from California. It's blue on blue. Pretty car but incredibly slow, even with the stick. I can't imagine how bad an automatic must be.

My fam bought an '82 LS diesel 2-door as a junker to put me on the insurance (lower premiums than the brand new '01 Jetta TDI I actually drove, lol) Actually, they bought the Rabbit first. That was around 1999 when I first started driving. My dad loved the junker so much (and the fact that it still ran) that it inspired him to buy me the TDI. The little Rabbit was a great car; it was green with green velor, manual transmission, the premium alloy wheels, and a crank sunroof. Fun little car...too bad it eventually died.

Not a Wolfsburg This rabbit was made in Pennsylvania not Germany.

This car was not made in Germany nor is a Wolfsburg. It was made in PA. Just fyi.
Car looks great though. I thought my 83 rabbit had fantastic interior but this one puts mine to shame. Nice find.

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