The Friendly Market is just down the street a few blocks, the place to go when needing to fill up the kombucha jug or a grab a killer sandwich. In the heart of the Friendly Street neighborhood, the car spotting is also often good, but even I was pleasantly surprised to catch two of the these Mk I Golfs/Rabbits there at the same time. I’m familiar with both of them, and have probably shown them before, but it’s nice to see them still in action, and together. And there’s a bonus in this shot: two old Subaru wagons, the perfect complement to the Rabbits.
The red wagon in front is a first gen Legacy, and the other red one behind the Forester is a Loyale/GL, the generation just prior to it. And there’s a black Volvo V40 wagon, a bit of an oddball too. Just another fall day in the Friendly ‘hood.
The VWs are interesting. From here, it looks like you have the complete set – a Pennsylvania-built one with its Americanized metallic paint and full wheel covers, and an older German-built one with its youthful color and businesslike steelies and caps.
My sister had one of each. Her German 77 was all business and a hoot to drive, while the Westmoreland diesel with its American-style tufted vinyl interior and full wheelcovers just seemed wrong somehow.
Seemed wrong somehow? I remember Car and Driver referring to the American-built ones as the Malibuization of the Rabbit.
I drove 2 diesel Rabbits in my 20s — a tan ’77 and a green ’82. The tan one was actually fun to drive once it got to speed and felt like a progression from the Beetle, the ’82 seemed wrong at first but once you got over the american-made feel, it was a more comfortable car.
Both cars got Hybrid-esque gas mileage – in the 80s!
My girlfriend’s mom had a metallic blue ’78 diesel with a blue interior, that was a neat little car.
Wild Rabbit and tamed Rabbit, perhaps?
Quite a contrast, mean street and friendly street within two posts!
I must say I prefer the cars on mean street, but the ones on friendly street are in much better condition and actually useful as vehicles.
There’s a lesson there somewhere…
My mean street cars will take the lunch money from these guys without having to even say a word…
I would love to have an early German one again. Fantastic car, no BS.
So it will now rain in Eugene until next spring, with a break or two?
Hard to say. It’s been exceptionally wet for this early in the season. But it’s hard to predict. Sometimes we’ll get a long sunny stretch in the winter, other times not.
My question to the VW Rabbit/Golf fans (Mk I and II):
What is the most trouble-free US-spec, or US-legal variant?
My sense is the original US spec 75-77 carburetors were troublesome. The Fuel Injection was much better.
But my sense is also that the Mk II fuel injection in the 85-87 models (CIS-E) was more trouble-free than the Mk I (even though the cars were heavier).
Diesels were the best
Your comments?
I had a ’77 German (Mk1) Rabbit and it’s fuel injection was trouble free, except for a $45.00 aux air regulator I changed in 1990 at about 140k miles. This was to get the fast idle working again for cold starts.
I’ve owned a ’86 German (Mk2) Jetta since ’91, at about 300k miles (last year) I had to replace the main fuel pump ($85.00). The transfer (in tank) fuel pump was replaced under recall in 1992 and still works fine. Both cars additionally went through a couple of fuel pump relays ($35.00). I carry a spare, although it can easily be bypassed if needed.
I did at one time have a ’75 Rabbit with factory Zenith carb that had lots of problems. ’75 and ’76 used the Zenith. An aftermarket Weber (Pinto type) replacement worked great and was trouble free. It was a CARB (California emission) legal replacement.
The Westmoreland cars were inferior to the German models, especially the earlier cars. The Mexico Mk2’s were inferior to even the US built cars. I worked for VW during this time period so have firsthand knowledge.
I drove a 1978 VW Rabbit (German) for over 117,000 miles and never had any trouble with the fuel injection. Occasionally a piece of grit would make it past the fuel filter and cause a miss; this could be cleared up by lightly tapping the injector tube with a screwdriver handle or a wrench until the grit became dislodged and passed through the combustion chamber.
Actually this particular Rabbit was one of the two or best cars I’ve ever owned (I started driving in 1967). Other than normal wear items the only thing I ever had to replace was the master cylinder for the brakes. When I traded it away it still had the original clutch and, while I changed front brake pads a couple of times, the rear brakes remained untouched. After seven years of being out in the weather the Rabbit was pretty ugly looking but still functioned well as a car.
I had a couple of Sciroccos and a Jetta plus my sister had a Rabbit Convertible. My opinion is that the best US market Mk1 cars are the German made cars with K-Jetronic fuel injection. Between the four cars with over 100k miles each we only replaced fuel filters (often) one injector and one set of injector O-rings, plus wear items like brake pads and rotors and one CV joint. My first Scirocco did suffer terminal rust, but that happens with road salt.
The fuel injection on my 49-state ’77 Scirocco, which I bought in 1980 with about 40K miles, was flawless. Pretty much everything else, quality and reliability-wise, was flawfull. If that isn’t a word, it should be.
“Diesels were the best”
Um, uh, er, uh, not exactly. Give me an operational definition of “best”.
I owned a 79′ and an 84′. The 79′ got outstanding mpgs, especially on the freeway. They were both great at emptying my wallet on repairs. “Best at needing continual fixing” for sure.
I had the misfortune of briefly taking ownership of a 1983 Westmoreland built Rabbit Diesel LS. I always liked the body style (as pictured in light blue here), but as JPC mentions, the car was such a watered down version of the original that it had lost all of the charm and fun possessed by its German-built brethren. I never even got around to registering mine (a highly optioned model with velour seating, crank sunroof and those annoying passive belts that you’d basically step into upon entry). It came to me at a great price with a spare engine in the cargo bay, as I shortly thereafter discovered that the installed engine had a hairline crack in the block. I was lucky enough to sell it to a diesel aficionado for what I had in it, as the body and interior were in stellar shape. He intended to install the spare mill and clean it up for his daughter as a first car. As much as I liked the looks of the car, the domestic interior trimmings alone just detracted from what I knew the earlier ones to have been. I don’t consider it a loss that I never got the full ownership experience with that one.
When I first saw the headline and the photo, for a moment I mistakenly thought you were referring to the 2006-08 Forester as “old.” By the standards of my youth, our ’06 Forester X Premium 5-speed (which looks identical to the pictured one) is indeed an old car. Luckily, ours is doing fine despite having passed 105K and the concomitant timing belt change. What a fun and useful car – not too high up and not too low, and the easiest (non-convertible) car to see out of, at a glance, in any direction. The only downside is limited rear-seat legroom, but it’s a worthwhile tradeoff for the short wheelbase.
That’s what I thought too – and I suddenly felt real old. Didn’t even see the real old one until I read the text and went looking for it. I must learn to check out the whole photo first!
Seeing cars paired together is always a special treat. As luck would have it, this weekend, I discovered a warren of Rabbit pickups — three of them at the same house: Quite a collection. The one in front is a diesel.
Not a car I would have bought, but I still enjoy looking at them.
It would have really completed the scene had the Volvo wagon been a 240.
I seem to recall that the whole Westmoreland Rabbit idea was a fiasco from the start.
The story, as I remember it, was that the Germans figured that the best way to build cars in the U.S. was to buy all the sub-components in the U.S. and that an American manager would have relationships with American suppliers…so they brought in some guy from Buick. He tried to make crisp little German cars into mini-Buicks and managed to kill a very good idea.
However, this is just the legend I’ve heard -does anybody know the true story?
You got it mostly right. When the dollar tanked against the German mark, it really hurt VW, so the solution was to take over a never-opened plant built by Chrysler in Westmoreland, PA. The hired a Chevy exec, James McLernon to run it, and he insisted that what Americans really wanted was a baby Malibu. So the suspension was softened, and the interior made cheesier. The result was not appreciated by VW die hards, and it also didn’t convert Japanese car buyers either. It started off ok, because of the second energy crisis, but then sales soon dropped badly; 60% from 1980 to 1985.
VW pulled the plug in 1988, and shifted production to Puebla, Mexico, where it now has a giant operation.
I grew up near there. It used to be a lovely farm we’d drive by on the back way to Greensburg. PA got suckered by Chrysler, then VW, then SONY (hired temps only) to try to bring jobs to the area. Each time it was corporate welfare, plus it made that area look more backward and slapdash than it deserved to.
That area had been previously screwed up by coal mining and coke-making and steel mills and so forth, leaving massive piles of tailings, caved-in roads and hillsides, and creeks running yellow. When I moved to NYC I noticed that nothing there with Carnegie’s name on it had any mention of the wreckage he left behind that generated his ability to be generous, like Bill Gates spending the first part of his life stealing money out of school lunch funds for “missing” software licenses with inspections under duress, then he bequeaths large amounts with his name on them to fund educational projects. plus ca change
I grew up in an old house that had been built by a mining engineer, from the inspection diary and the furnishings I’d say he made out well, but the land paid a price.
Those first-gen Legacies are probably my favorite Subarus, and so many years into CC, I don’t recall that anyone has captured a turbocharged variant in the wild. That probably makes it among the rarest production cars of the era.
And I’ve been having a real Mk1 hankering lately. So thanks for this post.
There is a turbo AWD Loyale/DL wagon near my house, but I don’t remember ever even seeing a turbo Legacy. In fact I wasn’t even aware such a thing existed…
My ex-wife had a Rabbit convertible. I think it was a 1989 model. It had an automatic transmission and that was the problem.
On automatic cars, the starter-motor was sandwiched between the engine block and the exhaust manifold.
The ex-wife’s job was 20 miles away. She would drive home and stop for gas. The car would not re-start until the starter-motor had cooled off.
Apparently when the starters were rebuilt it never had to pass a hot-soak test.
I asked the dealer for a NEW starter that had never been in a car before. The dealer said there were none. I had to tell the ex-wife only to buy gas when the car was cold (like on the way to work).
The Rabbit convertible was slow and it gave me a few humorous incidents, this was one of them. Never buy a Rabbit with a 3-Speed Automatic transmission.
The retro-mobile VW should have built was not the New Beetle, but a version of the Mk1 Golf/Rabbit with modern, reliable mechanicals. The Mk1 was such a beautiful car, with crisp, sharp lines that still look great to this day. Plus, the simple two-box design was very practical, as well. The original Mini and Civic are okay, but the only car that really comes close to being as sharp as the VW is the Fiat 128. Neither the British nor Japanese were quite as good as the Germans or Italians at early, small, FWD car design.
It’s a shame that it’s only the German, fuel-injected cars that enjoy the best reputation, with the early carburetor and later Westmoreland/Puebla cars being so miserable, virtually annihilating VW’s hard-earned quality reputation to all but the most die-hard fans..