Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Jetta is set up for street and track, and is claimed to done double duty in both SCCA Time Trials and as a daily driver. That makes it a great car to let you run what’cha brung, but is it price equally accommodating?
Yesterday we went full American. More brazenly so than the Waffle House. More so than even Honey Boo Boo or those wonderful beardos of Duck Dynasty, if you could imagine that being possible. That’s because there's hardly anything more representative of the innate sense of being that is the U.S.A. than a 1971 Cadillac Eldorado four by four. And with a 65% Nice Price win, it proved also emblematic of America’s sense of knowing a deal when they see it. USA! USA! USA!
Of course, due to our overwhelming love of freedoms and such you don’t actually have to drive an American car to be a true American - in most places. And if you’re going to roll in one of those furrin’ jobs then you could do far worse than to one that’s able to acquit itself with aplomb on both street and track.
Today’s 1987 Volkswagen Jetta two-door is just such a bipolar immigrant. It has however acclimated well to America as it is as loud and in your face as any native-born. It’s rare these days to find a Jetta with fewer than four doors like this second generation car. It’s rarer still to find one not only in respectable shape but spec’d out to beat the clock as well as the traffic.
There’s a litany of raceriffic parts on this Jetta, but visually perhaps the coolest of those are the Corrado wheels which are in fact BBS basketweaves. Sitting atop those is your standard Jetta three-box body, albeit with a round light front clip and a paint and decal treatment that will likely attract the law like a hot steamer collects blue bottles.
Under the Jetta’s hood lies a 2.0 16V with 7K on a full rebuild. That’s backed up by VW’s 5-speed box and there’s a bunch of Neuspeed stuff keeping the strut towers wiggling their waggles. A short shift kit hopefully improves the notoriously rubbery rowing action.
Inside the car you’ll note that it’s not so much of a party wagon as the rear seat and pretty much the rest of the interior niceties have been replaced with a KIRK 4-point cage and a pair of Sparco buckets sporting five-point belts to keep even your nuts in line. A Momo tiller with quick release and dash-top Autometer gauge trio finishes up all the names this car drops like the bass.
The chassis has 79K on it, which might lead to the question of how many of those were done under the age accelerating auspices of SCCA. The seller notes that the mods were made by a previous owner, not himself, but that he has been using the car without issue as a daily driver for three months while he finished working on his Harlequin romance.
Three months should be long enough to be able to tell if any part of the car is about to shart its khakis, and really considering its history, anyone thinking about buying this Jetta is well advised to have it thoroughly inspected prior to laying down the Benjamins.
Should it pass that inspection just how many Benjamins would one need to drop? Well, the car is presently advertised on VW Vortex for $5,000, and if it can’t be sold on that VW cult of cray cary then perhaps the price needs to come down some.
What do you think about this cool Jetta street/track car and its $5,000 price? Would you give that price a green flag? Or, is that a total DNF?
You decide!
VW Vortex, or go here if the ad disappears.
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