Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. In the German cars of DOTS, the Rabbit count was too low!

Alameda actually has plenty of Mk1 Rabbits on the street, but I just haven't been paying enough attention to them. So far in this series, we've seen this '81 diesel pickup and this '83 4-door LS. Perhaps I'm just having flashbacks to the miserably underpowered dual-brake-pedal-equipped '77 diesel Rabbit that my high school used for driver-training classes; driving instructor "Coach Bob" took sadistic pleasure in making total beginners enter the Nimitz Freeway via the fiendishly short 16th Avenue onramp in the 47-horse Rabbit. But I'm over that now (not really), so we'll be playing Golf Catchup for a while.


American car buyers didn't have many affordable convertible options during the Late Malaise Era. The MGB was done in 1980 and the last TR7 came in 1981; the Mustang convertible didn't return until 1983. The Rabbit convertible sold for $9,340 in 1982. That was $2,358 less than a new Chrysler LeBaron convertible and $2,950 less than a Fiat Spider. This one has the rare "laptop keyboard glued to dash" option.


Here's a view of the Rabbit from the Evil Skylark, which lives just down the street.

Send an email to Murilee Martin, the author of this post, at murilee@jalopnik.com.