I recently came across a small trove of very old pictures that I most likely shot on a Vivitar 35mm Point and Shoot back in the mid to late 80’s. On a lark, I tried my hand at scanning them in using my Brother MFC scanner function and was surprised at the quality so I will share some here. These pictures were shot in front of my first apartment while at college in San Luis Obispo, CA and would have been shot between September 1988 and June 1989. The 2-door Jetta in the foreground is a 1983 model and belonged to one of the sorority girls that lived around the corner.
I was a fan of all things VW/Audi at the time and I really liked this Jetta. Upgraded with european headlights and the wheels from either specifically a 1985 VW GTI or a 1985-1987 VW Jetta GLI it just “worked” in combination with the Mars red paint and the plaid interior. I looked it up on the California smog check database and it appears that it was last checked for emissions in the year 2000, so is either no longer on the road, moved out of state or someone changed to a different license plate number.
Check out all of the other cars in the background, this was less than a mile from campus so lots of off-campus parkers and also residents of the surrounding houses and apartments. This is very typical Central California student transportation of the era with most students coming from either Northern or Southern California, very few out-of-staters at the time. Click on the pictures to enlarge.
That Jetta looks slick – the two-door was always uber-rare, wasn’t it? I don’t think I ever saw one with the Euro headlights, wonder if the sorority girl was a VW fan as well to make those improvements?
I was wondering the same thing. A sorority girl gearhead seems unlikely…but you never know…
A Yugo! I’ve actually seen only one on the road SINCE ’89!
I occasionally see one in my L.A. neighborhood that is actually in pretty good shape. The first time I saw it, I just stopped and stared in amazement.
I’m guessing being in L.A. perhaps helped that Yugo, Pittsburgh eats up cars made of stouter stuff, Seeing a Yugo “live” is like seeing a UFO, You tell someone you saw a Yugo on the road here today and they don’t believe you! LOL!
I wonder who the poor student was who got stuck driving that?
Yugos were still “new” in ’89, fyi
Even when new, they were old.
My brother used to be an insurance claims adjuster. One time he totaled a brand new Yugo, the owner drove over a speed bump a little too fast, and the Yugo broke in half at the firewall
I went to Cal Poly SLO in the early eighties. I wasn’t an out-of-Stater, but when I bought my dad’s 1970 Challenger, I kept it registered in Texas and never got insurance on it. I was very, very fortunate that I never got into an accident or pulled over by the CHP or local fuzz. Most of my commute from Morro Bay was aboard my 1972 Yamaha 650 (also uninsured), and I never got a ticket for parking on campus without a permit. The campus cops didn’t bother checking the motorcycle parking areas. Every dollar counted back in those starving student days.
Well sure, every dollar saved got you FOUR 25c drafts at the Mustang Tavern on Friday afternoons…They sure cracked down on parking when I went there in the late 80’s but with my motorcycle as well as cars. By that point, every dollar counted for the state.
A true 2-door sedan!
Certainly ! The Golf and Jetta’s main competitors in the early eighties, the Opel Kadett D and Ford Escort Mk3, weren’t available as sedans.
Still, there was a true 2-door Opel Kadett D, as can be seen below. It looked exactly the same as the 3-door hatchback. Its successor, the 1984 Kadett E, was available as a sedan with a real trunk.
Wasn’t there a Ford Orion in Europe then? An “Escort with a trunk”?
You’re fully correct. The Ford Orion Mk1 (Escort Mk3 with a trunk) was already introduced in 1983,
I thought it became available (much) later.
I find it a little peculiar that we didn’t get that here as a trunked member of the Escort line, what with the American market’s peculiar preference for non-hatchback sedans. I suppose they figured it was easier to upsell you to a Tempo if you wanted a trunk?
The Chevelle behind the Jetta is fine with me. Not sue if it’s a 2 door or 4 door, but would still like to have!
Almost the first thing I noticed.
“…I looked it up on the California smog check database and it appears that it was last checked for emissions in the year 2000, so is either no longer on the road, moved out of state or someone changed to a different license plate number…”
Or the California BAR database is wrong.
Running my own license plates, one of them comes back to a 1996 GMC Jimmy S15 4WD. The license plate and registration are current, but on a 1963 Chevrolet. The registration card is in my hand as I type this, a current registration sticker is stapled to it, and the car is parked 20 feet away in my garage, both of the license plates on it. Strange.
I have never owned a GMC Jimmy.
BAR says no worries, it’s probably their error, but it’s DMV that counts and they’ve got it correct.
I had an ’80 2 door Jetta. Silver with sunroof, and lower black factory tape stripes as well. From the rear it looked similar to a 2002 BMW. A great car and quite quick as by the time I bought it in ’90 someone had previously installed a more powerful 1.8 JH code engine out of a Scirocco. Downside is it was an automatic and had no AC. I bought it in Washington state when I moved here the first time from ’89 to ’91. Took the 5 speed trans and conversion pieces out of my totaled ’77 Rabbit (I had replaced the 4 speed) and was planning to convert over. Wound up moving back to Los Angeles and really needed AC, so it was sold with automatic still in place and replaced with my current AC, sunroof and 5 speed equipped ’86 4 door Jetta GL in ’91. I really liked that car. It handled great and no power steering gave it good road feel. I think the pictured ’83 Jetta has European headlamps and grille from the 1st gen Jetta.
This just made my day in an inexplicable way. We’re obviously of the same “Vintage”, as those were college years for me too. Those pics are just so reminiscent of a really good and positive time for me that they turned my whole mood around for a few minutes. I went through my Fahrvergnugen (sp?) stage a couple years later and drove a string of late ’80’2 and early 90’s V Dubs up until the mid 90’s. The quality of those cars was not much better then than VW’s quality is today, but they were just so much fun to toss around.
Seeing those pics makes me miss both those simpler days AND those simpler cars. No power windows, crank-open sunroofs, no power steering in some cases, radios that stayed on even when the key was not in the ignition, but headlights that went off with the engine. Fun cars.
I think I’m going to find a Van Morrison station on Pandora for the rest of my workday;)
PS: I had so much fondness and so many good feelings about the VW’s of that era that in the late 90’s when considering replacing my ’96 Sentra I shopped new Jettas and Golfs. As soon as I sat in the driver’s seat and noticed that there were TWO directional indicators in the cluster and that the LEDs for high beams, temp etc were all concealed behind “typical american looking” lenses I got a little discouraged. No single bare green LED bulb blinking away in the dash? The magic was gone as far as I was concerned.
Good thing I clicked to enlarge, at first glance the Yugo across the street looked like an A2 Golf. VW still has plenty of share in pic 2 with a 2nd Gen Scirocco and a bay widow Westfalia.
I still have fond memories of my post college 84 Jetta and my 2 Sciroccos from college. The A1 VWs were fun to drive and easy to fix and mine were basically reliable with mostly wear issues. I appreciated the lightness and simplicity of those 70s cars and the quirkiness of the Jetta’s 24 hour clock. There was also a real sense of connection to the car when you knew the oil was low by the oil temperature reading a little high and front tire pressures could be guessed by steering feel.
Pic 2 also has a Rabbit in it (driving). I was surprised to see the Yugo in my picture as well, don’t recall ever seeing it around campus. They were certainly “there” back in the day but sightings were still a bit of an occasion.
So many 2 doors! Proof positive the carscape went to shit starting the year I was born.
Those MKI jettas are so cool, my Dad had a GLI as a business car before I was born. That bodystyle has a big E21 vibe to my eye.
That Mustang probably has a slow 2.3 four-cylinder. The new Mustang has a 2.3 four, too, but it is turbocharged and has 310 horsepower. That Escort in the background would be nowhere near as fun to drive as a new Focus, which is still available as a hatch. Etc etc. There may be fewer non-sport coupes around – that Corolla in the background may be a coupe, but it’s a snore to look at and drive – but I fail to see how the carscape “went to shit”.
Can you be more specific of how “the carscape went to shit”?
100 of that 310 horsepower is wasted on hauling the blubber around, to each their own.
But only one suv visible, and it’s a real suv at that. That alone makes it a better carscape to me.
You’re right, to each their own. I just am happier cars have become more powerful, reliable, greener, often more economical, safer and better-equipped.
I do agree with you though on SUVs. They have their place but they’re not for me.
don’t make shit up off the top of your head xr7matt. thaose stats are ludicrous.
Geez facetiousness must not come off well in print, that or people obsessed with stats have no tolerance for humor.
In so many words I’d find it a much more appealing world to have engine and drivetrain development on par with today’s technology in cars packaged more like that Foxbody(or that Jetta, that Scirocco, that Malibu ect.). 19-20 inch wheels on a ponycar is what is ludicrous.
…”or people obsessed with stats have no tolerance for humor”.
I think you’re actually on to something.
The leader of a small political party (the Farmers’ Party) here once said: “Statistics, statistics…completely useless to me. Numbers !! That’s what I’m asking for !”
I had a 4 cyl 87 Mustang for 9 years / 110k miles. It was a good car, but s..l..o..w…
Even if the new one weighs twice as much, it has over 3 times the power and just has to be more entertaining to drive.
A classmate had a nice MKI Jetta 2-door when I was in high school. I was amazed how much nicer it was inside than all the Rabbits. It’s funny that VW decided to down-market the Jetta in the US after sending Rabbit/Golf/GTI production to Pennsylvania and then Mexico, where their reputations were ruined. Perhaps VW thought Americans bought Jettas for their trunks, but many people probably bought them because they had far better finishes and interiors than GTIs did. The more rigid body was a nice upgrade over the hatchbacks too, but even if they rattled like hatchbacks the Jettas would still have been nicer cars to drive and ride in.
I think I spy an 83-86 Thunderbird at the top right corner.
So much automotive sweetness in one pair of pix: 1st gen Accord hatchback, 1st gen Corolla Liftback, 2nd gen Scirocco. Somehow, the 1st gen Jetta never appealed to me. Something about it didn’t look right.
Very cool! Jetta 2-doors were always rather rare, and this is the first Mk1 I’ve ever seen with the Euro lamps. It’s a good look.
I wonder if the Chevelle is the oldest car in the photo? It’s a ’71 or ’72, but there’s the VW bus in the second photo, plus a little gray roadster in the upper left – MG? I also see a couple of things that look rather old in the distant background of both photos (topmost car visible under the tree in the second) but my eyes aren’t quite that good!
I was referencing the Yugo that DaveP is CURRENTLY seeing floating around his L.A. neighborhood, not the one on the photo.
In the bottom photo, I saw an early 80s Datsun/Nissan pickup and hidden behind the VW bus. There is a Volvo 240. I spot a first gen (1976-81) Honda Accord hatchback in the top photo with a 1980-81 Toyota Corolla 2-door parked in front of it. Those early 80s Toyota Corolla 2 door sedans vaguely resemble the BMW E21 320i. Especially if they have the 4 round headlights up front.
Geez, hatchback and import city on that block! The Chevelle is the only “American-y” car I can see (the 3-door Escort is technically domestic but blends in with the VWs/Corolla/Civics so it doesn’t count) California really did embrace those the small/hatchback/import trend a lot quicker than the rest of the country.
This picture would have been filled with Cieras and Buicks and LTDs and K-cars and giant station B-body wagons almost anywhere else in the country in 1988. I know those cars were less popular in Cali even back then, but hardly a single one on the whole block?? Regional car buying patterns within the US never fail to amaze me. This looks more like a quirky eclectic car enthusiast’s collection than an actual street scene to Midwestern eyes.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Yugo, Gen1 Jetta, or that weird shooting-brake bodystyle of Corolla in person, come to think of it. Also interesting to see how many 3-door hatchbacks and 2-door sedans were available back then. Off the top of my head the only 3-doors I can think of in 2016 are the Golf and the Yaris. Meanwhile 2-door sedans like Sentras and Corollas and Jettas are extinct.
Here is my own car at the time on the same street. This shot is taken from my second COAL a couple of years ago. It must have been a weekend with way fewer parked cars around when I took it. Check out the sweet 1984 Audi 4000s quattro on the other side of the street and my roommate’s Celica behind my car.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1980-audi-4000-the-boy-embraces-his-heritage/
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Yugo, Gen1 Jetta, or that weird shooting-brake bodystyle of Corolla in person,
The Corolla Liftback was excessively neat. I seriously considered buying one new in 78, but the headroom was just too tight. According to the write up in C&D in 76, the Liftback was based on the JDM Sprinter, which was a bit larger than the Corolla. The Liftback also had a 1.6 pushrod hemi, which I absolutely loved as it ran amazingly smooth. If Toyota had built cars then for people who sit a bit tall in the saddle, that car would have been mine, including the SR5 package which included a then rare 5 speed manual.
Here’s a better look at the Liftback
I concur, it was a neat style. Less common and less sporty-looking than the “standard” hatchback, it had a definite style all its own without anything else that looked similar at the time.
Funny to see a Yugo again !!
I drove through in Yugoslavia in 1980 – there were Yugos everywhere but they were called Zastavas – even the police had them [ and an AK47 on the passenger seat]
What? No shots of cars in the Madonna Inn parking lot? Almost always something interesting there.
The street scene looks just like Bosnia with the Yugo and the old VWs.