These two relics from around the same time period used to sit in a driveway across the street from where they are now, sporting FOR SALE signs. One wonders how they came to own such two disparate cars. Is there something they share in common, to make someone want to have them in the first place. Or maybe they just like a bit of variety in their automotive life. Or did.
Diesel Rabbits were a fixture in Eugene, for a very long time. There’s still a couple clattering around, but the numbers are dropping precipitously. Who’s going to save this one?
Here’s the particulars. “Daisy” looks and sounds like she’s in pretty decent shape still. Only 150k miles? It’s barely broken in.
Since this is a round eye version, I’m assuming it was still made in good old Germany, as the Rabbits coming out of the Westmoreland, PA. factory all had rectangular headlight, no?
You know you want Daisy. Who cares if she only has 48 hp? You’ll be getting 48 mpg. And cruising along at 48 mph. It’s synchronicity, something we specialize here in Eugene.
If Daisy is a bit too pokey for you, how about this low and sleek Camaro, my favorite generation? It was there for sale already a couple months earlier when I shot, so that explains why the grass is greener suddenly.
A V6 with automatic, and only 145k miles. Time for a rebuild. And that price is now down to $1700, so you might still have a bit of room for further haggling.
Looks pretty straight and decent for one of these; not many of them have survived the assaults of their youthful owners.
You’d best be a fan of hard plastics if you’re going to consider buying this.
My recommendation is to make an offer for both; the seller is undoubtedly motivated, and you’re going to have two of the most outstanding cars of their time.
Meanwhile across the street, the driveway looks a lot less crowded now with these two gone.
Maybe the Prius in the driveway explains why “Daisy” fell out of favor. Both cars look pretty straight, and both best relatively low miles. Hopefully this owner will find some takers soon.
I wonder if the Vue is “his”, replacing the Camaro and the Prius is “hers”, replacing the Rabbit? (Or vice-versa, of course). But that’s the way I see it having played out as to what replaced what.
Or was it like my driveway with four cars, two drivers, and an impending culling of the herd? Only Paul knows the answer…
I believe the Prius is a “Touring” Prius, based on the narrow-spoked 16-in. wheels.
The standard Prius wheels were 15’s on thicker-spoked wheels.
I wonder which of the two has harder plastics inside? Actually, they both look in fairly decent shape, considering.
I think my pick would be Daisy. I like the old round headlight Rabbit/Golfs. Simple, honest, not writing any checks they can’t cash. $2k seems a little steep though, unless these have passed the low point of their depreciation cycle and are in fact “restorable!” as per the sign…
The white vinyl upholstery in the Camaro is purty. Always liked a white vinyl or leather interior.
It does the rest of the interior a big favor, toning down the black hard look of everything. I’m surprised how well it’s held up for having 145k on the clock, GM vinyl in the 80s isn’t exactly MB Tex, speaking from experience.
The Camaro looks so much like the one I looked at in high school, only it was red. I swear the same wheels were installed. I’ve never been a third gen Camaro fan, even then, but it was in my price range(ironically $1,700) and literally a block away at a small dealership. It turns out, no, I don’t like plastic. It was noticeably slower than my Mom’s Quest minivan, needed work(the V6 seemed to have a lot of leaks), it was an auto – I may have bought it if it was manual, just to tear it up and learn on – and my Dad talked me out of it after suggesting insurance premiums would be high on a Camaro of any kind. I will say, the looks weren’t bad, the early base front end with the open slats, as well as the lack of lower ground effects, looked better to me than the much more common Z/28/RS/IROC-Z packaged Camaros I was familiar with, it looked more like the second gen cars without all that dressing.
I’d still probably pick the rabbit. I was under the impression that later round eyes were built in Pennsylvania, but I’m not an expert on them.
I like them both better than what’s in the driveway now.
That rabbit reminds me of my 1980 GTI it was white and 2 door but had the same round headlights as it was made in Germany. It was faster than this one with a 1.6 fuel injected gas engine, aftermarket throttle body and a set of headers and no catalytic converter as they were not required yet in Canada. It had the red plaid seats and took the corners like a go cart. I miss that car but I think parts would be harder to find now then they were in the 90’s when I had mine.
I have seen a few convertibles around lately for a good price but parts availability scares me off as they don’t have the support like the old aircooled models do.
I’m pretty sure “Daisy” would be on its 4th engine by now. Looks like a fire sale to make bail to me….
Given the sensible nature of the current rides, I’m thinking more like someone is just tired of wrenching to keep the old Rabbit and Camaro driveable (and wondering if they’ll have a way to get back home wherever they go).
The Vue and Prius, while sterile and lacking in character, are surely a whole lot less maintenance-intensive.
I’m leaning more towards the Camaro. 48 mpg sounds great. But I don’t think 48 mph or 4000 miles of diesel-racket cross-country, back to the east-coast, would make for a fun road-trip. Plus, it looks like the Camaro has AC!
Happy Motoring, Mark
I think that the seller should seriously consider any and all offers. I didn’t see a line of people waiting to look at them.
Hmm, for me anyway, a tough choice to make (I’d be tempted to try and buy both), as both have points in their favor. A yellow car? I love it, and the diesel is almost a bonus.
The Camaro? I find the white over white strangely compelling (isn’t this a fairly rare color combo?) but at the same time this car is like a blank canvas that might need a hell of a lot in the way of “modifications” to be something special.
Living in Florida it would all come down to whether either one has A/C…though I might forgive the Rabbit if it doesn’t have it.
Your “favorite generation”? 😉
Those basic Camaros are nice looking, no wonder they sold well in the early days of the 3rd. I’m not a fan of the iroc-z/28s gussied up looks.
Love them both!
The Camaro is great, truly, madly, deeply like everything about it. But, and here’s the fly in this ointment, I’d probably never get it to pass Calif smog and so that is that. Cars of the 80s here are rare now, not because of rust, but probably because those rat nest vacuum hose era smog controls are beyond repair. But what a good price!
The rabbit is simply The Greatest Car Ever ™. And the price is good as well. No smog laws on those here, so it’d be the one I take home. The round headlight version is the one I like most, and I even like the color!
The seller will regret parting with these when he’s old and hale.
If that Rabbit was originally sold in Oregon, it probably doesn’t even have AC. But if it does, those Rabbits typically used a heavy York compressor, mounted with rickety brackets, that would disintegrate after prolonged diesel vibration.
As for the Camaro, no smog test for vehicles 25 or older here in the Old Dominion.
Though it probably has the infamous, and now seized, Delco R-4 AC compressor.
Plus, no telling how that 2.8 and baby Hydramatic would hold up on a 4000-mile trip.
But it sure could be the more comfortable highway ride.
Happy Motoring, Mark
VW changed over factory AC to the rotary vane compressor in ’78. I had a ’75 Rabbit (gas) with a big York dual piston compressor, it was a VPC add on unit with the crack prone compressor bracket, I replaced it with a factory AC ’77 Rabbit mounting bracket, this was made of spring steel and could deal with the vibration’s and weight without cracking.
That’s my understanding, and the PA cars also had corner-mounted rather than fender-mounted sidemarkers, and long rather than short taillamps.To my eye, the round-headlamp Wabbit looks the way it was designed and intended; the rectangular-lamp cars look like less-than-faithful copycats.
That’s to say nothing of the common chitterchatter about the quality and reliability of the US-built cars vs. the German-built ones…I have no direct experience with that particular question; my experience was with a ’90 (Mk2) Jetta, a very poorly-built and unreliable car that never failed to get VW devoté(e)s’ eyes rolling as they would hold forth about the cruddy Mexican cars—they tended to run out of words to say when I pointed out ours was a German-built example.
Whatever. I don’t want either car; the Wabbit’s noisy and stinky zero-to-60 in “probably sometime later this month” and the Camaro’s lo-po engineering put me off. But I can appreciate both of them as emblems of their time and place.
If you bought a gasoline Rabbit in 1979 in the US, it came from just outside Westmoreland and had rectangular lights, vertical side markers, color-keyed interiors, and the same narrow taillights used on German-built Rabbits. 1979 diesel Rabbits though still were imported from Germany though, so they got round headlights, horizontal side markers, and mostly not color-keyed interiors (headliner always white, dash black). For 1980 diesels starting being built Stateside too; the Jetta and Rabbit/Golf Cabriolet would remain German built through the end of the first generation. The wide taillights would be introduced on US-built Rabbits in 1981, when the cars also got a new grille with wraparound side marker lights, and a redesigned US-specific dash and more luxurious seat trim. In ’82 the headliner changed from the traditional pleated VW style with the dome lamp up front near the rear view mirror to a GM-style single piece of mouse fur with a round dome light in the center.
Those two cars remind me of a former coworker. He used to drive a first generation Honda Insight, but he once mentioned that before he bought the Insight he also looked at the Camaro Z-28. To him, as he explained, both of those are “performance cars”. It just depends on how you define performance.
My stepbrother’s 1st car was a Volkswagen Rabbit. Think of this: Going to high school in 1988 and the Rabbit runs out of gas on the way. (I’m in the front passenger seat, btw). He pulls a $1 bill out of his pocket and we push the car to the gas station. Now he’s good to go for another 40 miles on a gallon of gas . . . his wasn’t a Diesel, though. Decent little car. When the wind blew, however, the car got blown around and rattled more often.
In the US, in 1979 the Diesel Rabbit was still German built, thus the round headlamp and horiziontal frameless side marker lamps. The gas version in 1979 were Westmoreland built, thus the rectangular headlamps and vertical black framed side marker’s on those versions. In 1980 both gas and Diesel were Westmoreland built. In 1981 the Westmoreland Rabbits received the front fender corner lamps and wider taillamps. I believe in Canada 1979 gas versions were still German built, from what some CC commenters have stated.
This Rabbit looks good for it’s age, not sure it’s worth 2k though. Maybe to the right person, German Rabbits that are not convertible’s are getting hard to find.
The Camaro is looking well cared for, really deserves a V8, though.
Does anyone remember the first images, in black and white, of the new Rabbit and Scirroco, in the motoring press ? The Rabbit was dressed in the Scirocco’s cast wheel, while the Scirocco made do with the Rabbit’s nice-looking pierced stamped steel unit. Funny; all subsequent factory advertising images reverted to the production wheel allocation, of course.
As in the historic architecture field, the earliest images of an object can be especially valuable when assessing design intent . . .
Could be the alloy wheels on the US Scirocco were optional in Germany on both models, with steels rims standard. But I don’t recall seeing those images.
This?
Conti, that was my guess, I think, at the time. The photo posted by cjiguy is not one I’ve seen, but could be from the same shoot. The editor of Car & Driver chose enlarged views, sans background, on the same spread, as I recall, with the Rabbit in darker paint and the Scirocco probably silver.
I had only recently become aware of Giugiaro, so this debut was doubly meaningful, to me. My brother later traded in his carefully-maintained old Beetle for a new silver Scirocco. At the time, a surgeon making 50G in California took home about half that, but it was apparently enough to swing this little rocket.
I know I have said this before but as someone from your great white salted neighbor to the north all I can think is;
” Two thousand dollars and no RUST!!!!?”
Heh. Well, we’re burning up down here, right now — and fire seems to promote rust like crazy . . . !
Some of the photos could make you cry: http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/content/kgo/images/cms/091415-ap-valley-1-img.jpg https://photos.smugmug.com/North-Bay-wildfires-force-evacuations-burn-homes-close-roads/i-qQxscqM/0/f24160ec/XL/AFP_T86Z3-XL.jpg https://mgtvkron.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/fire-100.jpg?w=650 https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-VM658_CAFIRE_P_20171009150155.jpg http://s79f01z693v3ecoes3yyjsg1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/AP5T0579.jpg
The Camaro looks pretty good for a nearly 35 year old car. A resourceful hot rodder could swap in a V8 for the V6 since up top the car looks solid.
As for the Rabbit, Daisy is the doppelgänger for a yellow Rabbit sedan driven by a gal I was crazy for back in high school. Hers was gasoline powered but was the exact same color. She drove me home one day our senior year (1987) and proudly told me as we rolled along “My parents gave me this car.”
I responded “Are you sure they love you?”
Consequently we never got married or had any children. ?
And to tie it in to a Curbside classic post up page, at our ten year high school reunion she attended sans husband and proudly told me she married and was a mother of two. She in all seriousness told me they named their youngest son Maverick.
My Response? “Maverick?!? What the Hell did you name his sister? Pinto? Bronco?”
Not surprisingly we haven’t spoken in twenty years. ?
I remember a C/D article featuring two similar cars, a faux GTI and a V8 Camaro. https://www.caranddriver.com/comparisons/battle-of-the-beaters-archived-comparison
If I had to pick one of these cars, and honestly, if the Camaro runs and drives for 1700, that’s not horrible, I’d pick the Camaro.
The reason Diesel cars aren’t more prevalent in the U.S. today is not just due to Dr. Oldsmobile or the fact that petrol is $3/gallon but the fact that diesel cars were during the tail end of the malaise era, smelly, smoky, noisy, and slow. The difference between a Gasoline Rabbit and a diesel rabbit in terms of acceleration was leisurely v. some possibility. You NEEDED every horsepower that a gasoline Rabbit had.
The diesel rabbit offered better economy, which became a moot point as the Soylent Green fears of 1975 subsided, and (sometimes) a longer life expectancy, but what good was an engine which went 300,000 miles when the rest of the car disintegrated around it?
If diesels had made the progress from 1975-1985 that the gasoline engine did, they’d have had twice the power by 1985 and be getting twice the economy, but manufacturers didn’t invest in them to that degree.
Anyway, the diesel Rabbit is more an artifact of its (awful) time than the Camaro, which can be improved to 2017 standards or at least was a better car in its year. Plus the Camaro is a good illustration of that classic maxim, old GM cars run badly for longer than most cars run at all.