After all these months of DOTS, we've only seen two water-cooled VWs (a Rabbitamino and a Quantum). The island is buzzing with air-cooled Beetles (so many, in fact, that I could probably show nothing but Type 1s in this series for a solid month), but what happened to all those Rabbits? They used to be everywhere! And let's not even talk about Dashers and Sciroccos. So, I've been keeping a lookout for vintage water-cooled Wolfsburg machinery, and was rewarded with a few more Rabbitaminos and this 4-door '83 Rabbit.
VW ditched the Rabbit nameplate for North American Golfs after the 1984 model year, so this is one of the last of the original Rabbits. I did my high-school driver training in a very loose dual-brake-pedal 70s Rabbit... which, come to think of it, was the last time I've driven a Golf of any sort.
The LS Rabbit for 1983 came with 74 fuel-injected horses... which wasn't all that bad for a Late Malaise Era subcompact. Of course, 74 horses coupled with an automatic transmission- which is what's in this example- made freeway onramp merges a nail-biting experience.
This Rabbit's interior is on the Spartan side, but still in pretty good shape.