-5 points for not making the obvious Rabbit-amino crack in the title.

Who makes caps for these?? Ill take a Rampage instead, thanks

it's amazing what a rabbitamino goes for if it's in good condition.

They made a Rampage with a diesel?

I've been ogling an 81 VW Caddy diesel, but I just can't get off the fence. Due to the greasecar factor, the Caddy diesel is skyrocketing in price. I frequently see them selling for upwards of $5k on thesamba.com. That's not exactly cheap for an underpowered, near featureless car-truck that's over a quarter century old.

"Blessed Mother of Acceleration " Brilliant quote from The Blues Brothers!

I was working for a VW dealership, sales and financing, when the VW truck was introduced. It was never really called a Rabbit Truck, although Rabbitamino would have been a great name; just a VW truck. They sold like crazy at first, until people realized that they really couldn't carry much, weight-wise or people-wise. Although I bought a new house and moved and one of these little trucks hauled a ton of stuff for me during that week.
The dealership owner convinced a local company that made shells for truck beds to make one for the VW pickup and we sold TONS of them. Then of course, VW decided to quit making the truck and the poor guy was stuck with a bunch. The one in this picture is, I think, an '81 which was produced in the PA. The Rampage was just a poseur!

They may have sold like crap, but I bet more than 75% of them are still being driven by bearded men who are waiting around for a replacement to come out... some day.

58 hp. 'nuff said.

The VW Pickup (actual name) and Dodge Rampage and all the other really small Japanese pickups are a product that has largely disappeared from the American marketplace. The smallest and most fuel efficient pickup now on the market is the ancient Ford Ranger. Nobody even offers their small pickup with a diesel.

Somebody please bring back the mini-pickup. Some of us need to commute cheaply to work AND move stuff on the weekend. Not all of us need to pull a 127 foot camper/house-on-wheels or pull giant stumps from the ground (like you can even do that with a big truck. I'd love to see the look on the guy's face after his rear axle is yanked out of the truck by a tree stump. Whoever tries to copy what he sees in an advertisement deserves what he gets.)

@eltonito:

Im pretty sure they never did, but as Adam Sandler once said, "Diesel gas sucks my ass"

@MeMikeYouNot:
Poser or not, it was better in every way, it even had a cooler name.

@harrnack:

I hope no one out there is chaining a stump to their rear axle

You can pull stumps with whatever's handy. I pull stumps with my '45 Farmall (18 hp, no kidding.) I pull stumps with my '87 Toy PU, and I pull stumps with an '01 Ford ClubWagon. Whatever you can hitch up to it, back up and give it a tug.

I'd love to have a solid diesel Caddy.

@danio3834: I did that with my 1977 Ford F-150 4x4. Trucks were a lot different back then. Creeper 1st + low gear in the transfer case made for something you really could pull stumps out with.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough in what I meant. I know you can pull stumps with almost anything if you know how to do it. What I was meaning was the running-start, fast-reverse, stump-flies-out-of-the-hole, dirt-scatters-everywhere scenario you see on TV.

Aren't you supposed to use explosives on stumps?

@MurileeMartin: at the very least some dead dino juice.

not to be a nit-picker, but the Rabbit truck was no import. Like all square-eyed Rabbits, it was made in Pennsylvania.

@danio3834:

Yah, but it was built on a Dodge OMNI chassis.'nuff said! :)

The men with the beards would probably love the Brazilian Ford Courier, though it's not diesel:

https://www.ford.com.br/Default.asp

roll over "pickups" and click on "courier"

At 750kg payload, it's actually pretty hefty for a tiny truck.

If you read Portugese you can even understand the site.

Wow, losta interest in the VW Pickup!

I am proud to say that a 1983 Metallic Slate Grey Diesel VW Pickup was my first car, all 53 hp. Yes, it was used to pull stumps, yes it got 40mpg, yes it was weak and slow. But it was mine, and I drove it until it died. I got my license at 16 yrs old and off we went.

Most of these beauties were built in Westmoreland County Pennsylvania, and has the US style square headlights. The Swiss postal service still used them as of a few years ago, but they had round headlights. As far as I know, they still build these in South Africa, and are pretty cheap.

The Brat is my weapon of choice. It's more hoon-centric.

@MeMikeYouNot:

I wasnt comparing a Rampage to a real truck, just the VW truck. Altho a Rampage does compare well against a Ridgeline...

Somewhere out there, exists a Shelby Rampage. Even if one of the bearded men has seen fit to GTi-ify their Rabbitamino, the Rampage still wins that battle.

Still, all econo-car based trucks are a little cool.

Car and Driver had a great article many years back wherein (it was either Csaba Csere or Pat Bedard) the writer reminisced about how one of the great drives of their life was a late night trip that involved flogging a diesel VW pickup over a long distance.

Anyone have access to Lexis Nexis?

not so underpowered at all - my stock, naturally aspirated truck made it over the Rockies fully loaded and pulling trailer on my last trip x-country:
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4db11b3127cce9b770f1...

@legerdemain:
Damn straight!Where else can get a P/U with seats in the bed?
Besides,Jaime Pressly drives a Brat on "My Name Is Earl".....

@danio3834: Those caps are off a Wolfsburg edition Rabbit, probably an '84. My father owned a silver 4-door Wolfsburg Rabbit which came from the factory with the GTI engine. Fun car, but not terribly reliable.

I drove a Gas Automatic '80 Rabbit PickUp in High School (still have minus engine and trans, and a bit of sheet metal given up to the NW rain & rust gods.) Yes, Factory Gas Automatic VW Truck. You think that deisel stick was slow, imagine lopping off 2 gears and add the torque converter. Yeah, you had the extra RPM's of the gas engine, but no torque and you lost that low start-out gear. I will say though, with having the automatic I didn't stall if I loaded it up, it just took longer to get going, of course that's assuming that you had all 4 cylinders... The thing was prone to overheating and not letting you know since the temp sensor was on top of the water exit out of the head and if there wasn't water, the idiot light wouldn't light up.

My big thought has always been to drop a small V6 in it, even with the stock automatic. I did lots of full throttle N-D dropps in that thing, they were pretty good auto's, I think they'd hold up to a good chunk of HP, that is, if you can fight the torque steer.

Thought #2 was to expand on the V6 idea and add a second engine-transaxle setup in the rear. It'd have to be an auto as well since trying to manage 2 engines and have to shift either one doesn't sound like something I'd like to do. Technical issues asside, imagine the sleeper possibilities on that one. Stop light drag: Smoke the front tires, a little impressive, smoke the back ones too, you can't buy that kind of confused look.

There is a pale, banana cream yellow one of those that drives around the Near East side of Madison. When i first saw it it was at the Biodiesal shop in my neighborhood, so it must be biodeisel, along with, now, 90% of the Benz'z in Madison. There is another biodeisel one that is a delivery truck for Glass Nickel Pizza.

PS- How do you spell deisal?