(first posted 5/16/2018) R&T was rightfully smitten with the new VW Rabbit (VW Golf Mk1). It won their comparison of Nine Small Economy Cars, as well as other accolades. So it was time to give the bunny a long term test. This was typically 24,000 miles, but because the new Rabbit suffered a number of maladies, the test was eventually extended to 36,000 miles, to redeem itself. It didn’t, so then it was extended again to 48,000 miles. We’ll share those with you once we work through the 1976 issues stacked up here. In the meantime, here’s the choppy maiden voyage.
That was an expensive car. I just looked it up and the *average* transaction price for a new car in the US was 1975 was $4950, so only about $230 more than the cost of this Rabbit. I can only imagine the sticker shock for someone going in to replace his 71 Beetle or squareback.
In 1974 I bought a new Audi Fox/Audi 80 for $4,000. 2 years later, when I dropped by the nearest VW dealer I was indeed shocked and surprised to see how expensive a Rabbit and a Scirroco were. Yet, I don’t know why I was, since they used the same bits as the Audi and it was a $6,000 car by then.
In 1971 a US dollar would buy you 3.65 Deutsche Marks. In 1975 it only bought you 2.46 DM (reference here). By 1980 the dollar was down to 1.82 DM. The US left the gold standard during this period.
In response, North American production of the Rabbit started at the Volkswagen plant in Pennsylvania in 1978.
The DM was pegged at 4 to a dollar until around 1970.
That is indeed expansive, $4950 in 1975 is equal to $23.5k in 2018. Last time I check you can buy a 2017 VW GTI in Hamilton VW in central Jersey, and 2017 Honda Accord LX sedan from most of Honda dealers. Borh og them are superior by any mean of evaluation
Inflation ran rampant between 1971 and 1976. A base 1971 Ford Pinto was $1,850. A ’76 (the same car except for federally-mandated 5mph bumpers and a revised grille) was $3365—just a bit less than double.
As a rough comparison, my Mom bought a new LeMans coupe in 1975, and it was around $5,000 out the door. It had the Pontiac 350-2bbl, automatic, power steering/brakes, am/fm radio, whitewalls, air conditioning, vinyl interior. So, probably equipped about “average” for the time. IIRC, its base MSRP was around $3590.
My grandparents bought a new Dart Swinger that year, as well. It was also around $5,000. Equipped about the same as the LeMans, except it only had the 225 slant six. And it had a vinyl roof, so that was a few extra bucks. I think its base MSRP was around $3510 or so.
You could definitely get more car for your money with the domestics back then. But, with the way the US economy was at the time, fuel crisis, recession, and such, I don’t think too many people cared. Fuel economy was what it was all about, and people were often willing to pay a premium for it.
I just googled it, so don’t take it as the gospel, but from what I could find, in 1975 the base MSRP for a Rabbit was around $3200, while a Bug was around $3000. So at a quick glance, they seem like a good value. Until you start optioning them up.
I read these extended-use Rabbit tests back in the day and I know how the story turns out. Don’t worry, though – you won’t get any spoilers out of me. 😉
Makes one realize why so many Toyota cars & trucks were purchased during this time period.
Toyota knocked VW out of the number-one spot for imported makes during 1975.
I wished the leading magazines did more long term tests like this. Far more value to a buyer when researching a new car, than a few hundred miles spent with a car by reviewers. Products with poor long term reputations like the GM 350 Diesel, and 1980 X cars, collected glowing reviews in Popular Mechanics early owners surveys at the time. One of PM’s most popular features for decades, essentially encouraging readers to buy potential lemons, with premature endorsements. You can locate these online. Surveys that typically only amounted to around 1,000 miles logged on a given car. Where typically the most significant negatives of a car, usually reflect the surveyed buyer not properly researching a car they bought, or buying a car that doesn’t suit their lifestyle.
It’s pretty easy to understand why the rags didn’t do a lot of long-term testing: if they did, no one would be buying Detroit’s crap. The bigger the buff magazine, the more domestic ad revenue was critical to their operation, and that’s why you rarely (if ever) saw a long-term test in Motor Trend, occasionally in Road & Track, and most often in Car & Driver. Car companies had no problem yanking ads if there was a particularly unflattering review of one of their products.
With all that said, it’s a real shame the Rabbit was such a steaming (and expensive) pile. To this day, I swoon over the crisp, no-nonsense, purposeful look of those Mk1 Golfs. Imagine when VW gets around to cancelling the New Beetle if they’d replace it was a retro-styled New Golf.
You’re reinforcing the point I was making. The magazines’ business models clearly valued ad revenue, and protecting the industry, over their reader’s best interests. Easy to see why the domestic industry was so turbulent, and consumers began choosing imports (Japanese) in droves.
As this test shows, it wasn’t just domestic vehicles that had problems with long-term reliability.
Remember that, during the mid-1970s, there were still reasonably priced European cars available in the U.S. A middle-class family could, if they so desired, buy a Fiat, Lancia, Peugeot or Renault. (I believe that Austin was gone after 1975 from the U.S. market.) Those cars had their charms, but long-term reliability was not one of them (except, perhaps, for the Peugeot).
A person could still get a decent domestic vehicle during this era, provided he or she chose carefully.
No, the reason they don’t do a lot of long term testing is because it’s just not interesting anymore. Regardless of who makes it they’d have to test to 100K to make any meaningful speculation about long term reliability because all cars today are pretty damned solid. Today’s long term testing is mostly about subjective likes and dislikes that appear over the course of ownership.
Car and Driver has performed long-term tests of various cars. During the 1980s, two GM cars – the 1982 Chevrolet Camaro Z-28 and 1986 Buick Riviera – experienced serious mechanical failures during the long-term test.
(If I recall correctly, GM was so miffed at the magazine’s road test of that Riviera, that it snatched the car back before the long-term test was completed.)
The magazine recently tested a heavy-duty Nissan Titan pick-up for the long haul, and deemed it a very disappointing vehicle.
Didn’t know about the bad ’86 Riviera but the C&D’s long-term ’82 Z/28 test was subtitled A 25,000 Mile Tale of Woe. I think it was actually posted here on CC a while back.
Your comments are why I find ANY car or truck that wins an “Initial Quality Survey” as no big deal. In today’s world I think that award is nearly meaningless since every car company manages to build a vehicle that looks good in a showroom.
The British magazine CAR has a fairly extensive fleet of vehicles under long term test at an given time, though unfortunately the test period seems to be 10-12 months and as many (or as few) miles as possible. Recently they had an Infiniti Q30(?), the same platform as the smallest Mercedes-Benz CUV, taken back by the manufacturer after only 3 months because of what the tester was writing about the car.
Chick Iverson sounds like a character. Found this online:
“Who the hell is Chick Iverson?” I had to laugh when I read that. You’re not from Orange County, CA. Let me add these few choice pieces to the article.
John Wayne and Chick were like Oprah and Gail. John Wayne was the Godfather to Chick’s son, who died at the age of 21 when he took a used Jaguar of the lot and ran off the cliff on his way to Laguna. Chick introduced John Wayne to his wife who worked on his ranch in South America. Chick Iverson was the executor to John Wayne’s Estate and controlled all the money for his children.
Chick Iverson was lucky in business and a genius. He was the son of immigrants. He had the largest cattle ranch in Oregon and the sixth largest in the US. He started as a salesman selling cars, with a high school education. His biggest decision was a fluke. He worked his way from salesman to general manager at a Porsche dealership in Chicago. He then opened up the first Porsche dealership in Orange County. Two years later he went looking to add another brand. His first choice was American Motors, second was Volkswagen.
When he decided to go with American Motors; he invited the representatives over to his house. One made a remark that offended his wife, so he went with Volkswagen and the rest is history.
I can’t believe that it still had a breaker point ignition. When did the big three convert to breakerless, wasn’t it around this time?
IIRC: GM went breakerless (no points) ignition, on all cars, in 1975, FoMoCo in 1976, Mopar in 1973.
All three had it as optional equipment before the quoted years.
At the time, I preferred to call it a pointless ignition.
Remember the little box from Bosch with this inside?
Oh yeah, though I doubt I can set them at 50 degrees by eye, on the first try like I could in the 70’s.
I used to always keep a spare set in the tool box, just in case, along with the cam belt. Whoever needs to carry a toolbox in their car nowadays?
The dealer installed (not the always superior factory installed) air conditioning price of $465 would equal $2043 today!! Seems like a LOT of money for a dealer stick on A/C unit to me.
The dealer installed (not the always superior factory installed) air conditioning price of $465 would equal $2043 today!! Seems like a LOT of money for a dealer stick on A/C unit to me.
I bought a DX trim Civic hatchback in 98. DX trim did not have factory air. The dealer wanted, iirc, $1500 to install the factory AC kit. I drove with the window open in the summer instead.
I knew someone with a ’75 or ’76 Rabbit with dealer air, added locally after purchase. IIRC, it operated like Mark IV after-market a/c, with a knob for temp and a knob for fan and wasn’t integrated into the heating. Consequently, the evaporator would occasionally freeze, remedied by turning the temp to off and the fan on high, till it started kicking out ice crystals. Back in those days, almost all dealer-installed a/c was inferior to real factory air. My R5 was the same. Best you could say about it was that it was better than not having it, at least in the south.
In the 1970’s Toyota consistently had a better A/C system in their cars than ANY German manufacturer did; be it dealer installed, Port of Entry installed or a factory unit.
Really disappointed me how long it took VW to get front drive, liquid cooled, cars sorted out. You would have thought that, having had the Audi F103 in hand for 10 years, their engineers would be pretty far up the learning curve by the time the Rabbit came out. Nope. Seems to have taken then an additional 40 years.
I remember a long term test of a diesel Rabbit in R&T. The diesel had an auxiliary vacuum pump to run the vac powered accessories, like the brake booster. The oil line to the vac pump had a crimp fitting that would break, repeatedly, and the vac pump would promptly suck all the oil out of the engine.
Memory fails to recall all the issues the Dasher suffered in R&T’s owner survey, but it was not a happy car either.
“Memory fails to recall all the issues the Dasher suffered in R&T’s owner survey, but it was not a happy car either.”
My father bought a ’75 Dasher wagon, and while he loved the driving dynamics, several repeat failures on common vehicle systems (for example, the driver’s door window linkage) led to it’s quick replacement.
And they actually held on to the car a bit longer despite all these build quality issues? To add to the point Steve made about dealer installed A/C, in 1999 when I was selling my Skoda Felicia the dealers charged me $4000 to install air in a Suzuki Baleno, and $4,800 for the same job in an Opel Corsa. Needless to say, I didn’t buy either car as the A/C would have added too much to the purchase price.
A friend of mine bought a ’74 Vega Wagon the same summer I bought mine. That steaming pile got replaced by a Dasher Wagon… with predictable results. That got traded for a ’76 Olds Omega (like a Nova) that turned out to be a pretty decent car. Bet those trades, in total, made a new Volvo look cheap by comparison.
I lucked out and found a used ’69 Malibu Coupe in Eugene, and kept the car for about 4 yrs. Never should have sold it.
Ma bought a 79 Diesel Rabbit at the worst of the fuel shortage. The sticker had ADP as a line item. Without even a trace of embarrassment, the sales slug said it was “added dealer profit”. At certain speeds, the dealer air clicking on would require a downshift. Blown head gasket at 80k. But, after that, it ran for years.
A lady I worked with loved rabbit diesels. Bought them from when they first arrived. I remember her telling me with the dealer installed ac if you stopped on any kind of good sized hill you had to turn the ac off to get it to move.
I had a 77 Rabbit and it was problem free for the 40,000 miles I owned it. It was the first fuel injected model and also had the same passive restraint belts this one had. The knee shelf was a great spot to hold the pack of cigarettes and a lighter! Here I am 40+ years later driving our 7th VW…picked up a new 2018 Alltrack 6 mt about 6 weeks ago.
You were indeed smart to sell it with such low mileage on it.
I remember the early Rabbit’s problems well, but they didn’t stop me from thinking that they truly were epic automobiles. Just worlds ahead of every U.S. and Japanese RWD sub-compact in driving dynamics and space utilization.
“Just worlds ahead”……except for: purchase price, long term maintenance cost, continued high mileage reliability and air conditioner effectiveness?
Ah good old Power Punch and Its Pappy Hilton’s Hyperlube. I had no idea that they had made it that far south by the 70’s and had already split. Hilton created his Hyperlube n the 50’s but when he passed on his sons couldn’t get along. One left with the formula in hand and started Power Punch.
Around here in the late 70’s and early 80’s Every B&B, Big Wheel, Shucks and Al’s had the Hyperlube crank and gears demo on the parts counter to play with while they tried to find the right catalog to find the right part. Try as I might I can’t seem to find an image of one anywhere online.
Wow, just looking at all the options needed just to make this a halfway livable car, stuff you assume a car includes nowadays. How about the $295 “performance package” (front disc brakes and radials)? That’s $1,324 in 2018 dollars not to have bias-ply tires and four-wheel drums on your new car. $204 ($912 adjusted) seems reasonable for a “deluxe interior/comfort group” until you learn that just gets you a carpeted floor, power-assisted brakes, and a “special sound/heat insulation package”. I’m curious how hot this thing got without the extra heat insulation. I mean, what car relegates heat insulation to the options list?
Guess you were born after 1980….. 😉
I’m currently driving a Police Interceptor Crown Victoria that has rubber matting on the floor and I am guessing lacks padding/sound insulation/heat shielding under what would be the carpeting. It is not terribly loud or warm without that padding (thanks to factory A/C) and I only notice the rubber getting in. However, I am not sure I would pay nearly $1,000 for padded carpets. And I am guessing that with carpeting costing about $200, I could install it myself and save a few hundred dollars.
The floor padding is pretty similar on the vinyl mat as it is in the civilian cars and is the same on the doors. It does lack the sound insulator under the hood and package shelf and some asphalt patches here and there.
Wow, how options have changed…I didn’t know the first Rabbits had 4 wheel drum brakes standard…I knew the transition to radials was underway, as radials were often sold as a “gas saving” premium…but that’s an expensive option for radials and disc brakes!
My Dad had a Beetle, (a ’59 with all drum brakes) but I’ve only owned watercooled VWs…my first was a ’78 Scirocco, it was well equipped for its time (fuel injection, front disc brakes) but expensive for the time I think the ’75 Rabbit probably was still carburated. My next car was an ’86 GTi, it came with 4 wheel power disc brakes standard (only 11 years after this). So does my current car, a 2000 Golf…but by 2000 4 wheel discs, and antilock brakes were pretty common…..the Golf has power windows and locks, sunroof and power steering which my ’86 GTi lacked, but again these items have become pretty much standard (my ’86 GTi also had air conditioning, but it was optional back then rather than standard in 2000).
I’ve kept a spreadsheet of what I’ve spent on my 2000 Golf over 18 years and it comes to 24.32 cents per mile if I include depreciation (if I estimate the token amount my car is worth it comes to about half that, 12.10 cents per mile excluding estimated depreciation….about the same (unadjusted for inflation) as they report for this ’75 Rabbit, albeit the Rabbit was much newer (only 2 years old) and they thought they paid a lot for it ($4427 was indeed a bit pricey in 1975 for a compact; we paid less than $4000 for a 1974 Datsun 710, albeit without air conditioning, but with automatic, and I think the 710 was considered the next size up from the Rabbit).
I was a bit taken aback by the standard front drum brakes, as well. Does anyone know when front disc brakes became standard on the Rabbit? From some perfunctory internet research, it looks like it might have been MY1978 when front discs became standard. That’s right down there with AMC not switching from vacuum to electric windshield wipers until 1970.
Worse than that, AMC did not switch to standard electric windshield wipers until 1972! Younger readers probably believe that was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. However, despite the fact that most base models were really bare in those days the typical new car buyer in say 1971 would not have even considered that their new vehicle might not come with electric wipers. (So you just picked up your new ’71 Javelin and then it starts raining – surprise!)
Know from experience! ((1970 Rebel))
Its in light of experiences this article illustrates, that the us Granada seems like a far better option, atleast with european eyes, where it wasn’t.
No european considering a rabbit would cross compare to a mercedes anyways, so the “equal to a merc” as Ford’s ad implies is meaningless. This is a beer budget kind of car, not champagne like a merc.
The Granada seems way more of a car than a rabbit though, even if the 351 V8 is only 138hp. The rabbit was only what, 60-70hp?
Great car? Perhaps not. But neither was a rabbit. Quick and fun, absolutely. But also flimsy, noisy, and with high nvh. Def not a cruiser for road trips.
My sister bought a 76 Rabbit brand new. Without listing every problem that this car had I’ll just say she got to know the repair crew at the dealership very well. It needed a new transmission within months, and it had to be flown in from Germany, and at 4 years old with almost 50,000 miles it needed rings and valves. It was a vile steaming pile of shit.
I had a college summer job selling cars at a VW – Mazda dealer. Rotaries and Rabbits created a lot of repeat customers for our service department. Not so many for salesman though.
I much preferred selling the original Beetle or a strippo piston engined Mazda Miser. I’ll say this for Mazda. When the gas crisis hit, they reacted fairly quickly to change their model lineup to emphasize more fuel efficient piston engines. That also helped reliability. Rotaries were a hoot to drive, but they just didn’t deliver piston-engine like reliability.
VW? They seemed dead from the neck up. I didn’t think it was possible to sell a less reliable car than the original gas engine Rabbit. Oh, excuse me Mr. & Mrs. Customer. My I interest you in a Bunny diesel?
In the late 1970s, one of my favorite cars as a 1977 Rabbit–because it had Fuel Injection and the 1588cc engine (in 1978 it got a 1459cc engine). I also liked the 1977 Scirocco, for same reasons.
I also l liked the Ford Fiesta!
Of course, I wasn’t old enough to drive then, I didn’t have money to buy a car, and didn’t know how ‘lemony’ these cars were–but I thought they were great.
My first car new car as an 86 VW GTI. At the time, in my office, two of my colleagues also had new Jettas. I remember one hated his, too many problems, the other liked his, some problems. Mine really didn’t have any problems, and I attributed this to the superior performance of the American workers who made mine (Jettas were imported from Germany). I kept it for 13 years and 145k miles, and of all the cars I’ve owned, that remains my favorite.
My father got a 90 Golf in Greece, Euro spec carbureted 1.8 liter. He kept it for 15-16 years, I think 150k km, other than a shifter that was troublesome getting reverse, no issues.
I’ve had two VWs since (both used), a Rabbit GTI and another Golf GTI. I could only keep one of them though, so I kept the Golf.
It wasn’t just “teething problems” as the article coyly says. VWs have a well-deserved reputation for being unreliable and expensive to fix. My one and only experience with a German-built Jetta + arrogant and dishonest dealer service put me off the brand forever and ever.
I know I’ve complained about my God awful ’75 Dasher in these pages before, but I’ll jump in one more time. Let me put it this way – it was the only car I ever owned that actually gave me high blood pressure. The repair bills were monthly, just like car payments! After two years, I sold the damned thing and rode my bicycle to work.
Volkswagen’s first water cooled, FWD car was the handsome K70 developed by NSU, built from 1970-1975 not available in North America.
My dad bought a new Miami Blue basic ‘75 VW Rabbit. I find it curious how my he went from driving Buick LeSabres & a Country Squire to a sub compact 4 speed Rabbit, a 100+ mile daily commute during a time of high & volatile gas prices was the reason. Our neighbor’s 1972 Chrysler Newport was traded in for a used Datsun 510.
At least, an honest review on this german “wonder”. Perhaps, if there were more of this, less people would drool over them at the time.
Interesting .
I never really looked at nor touched water cooled VW’s until the late 1990’s when I bought one, a thrice totaled ’84 Rabbit Rag Top and then two years later a super clean but poorly maintained ’82 for my then G.F. . she drove her into the ground in two years, it was total scrap .
I drove the piss out of mine including many several wee long road trips, it was amazingly reliable, my big brother borrowed it and drove it for a year or two .
I think I’ll keep my battered 1959 Beetle, it’s not fancy and is noisy as all get out but it’s really reliable (my current road trip car, rock knock and all) and dirt cheap and dead easy to repair being so simple .
-Nate
My family’s air-cooled VW’s were hardly problem-free in the 60s and early 70s. There were a few rebuilt or replaced engines under 40,000 miles and some pretty nasty problems with bad brakes and body rust. But, the dealer network was great and the repairs were generally cheap and easy. And the one problem they never had was shoddy assembly—that’s what makes this article so painful to read.
You can sell a mechanically imperfect product as long as it’s cheap and well-assembled, and still keep your stellar reputation. But if you charge a premium for indifferent assembly and lousy service then you’re just another car company. Which is all VW is today.
My best friend back then bought a near identical yellow Rabbit shortly after moving from Towson to Boulder CO in 1975. When I visited him that Fall I was very impressed after driving it, it felt more sprightly and nimble than my ’73 SAAB 99. However after suffering with many problems he evidently hadn’t learned his lesson when he then traded it in on a ’77 Scirocco. Then a few years after that it was a 320i. He was clearly a bit of a slow learner when it came to cars. And still is a glutton for punishment, he now has a new Passat. Some people never learn.
It always amazes me how forgiving C&D and R&T were of foreign car maladies. The quality (or lack of same) would have resulted in a scathing review if the car had been domestic. Instead, not so much.
When this article was published, Car and Driver magazine was still being very nice to all of its advertisers. The editors had learned their lessons from that scathing review of the Opel Kadett wagon. It is true that Road & Track loved to denigrate domestic cars though.
A girl in my neighborhood had a base model 1975 Rabbit. She used to take me to Wendy’s for Frosties in it a couple years before I was old enough to get my license, and I believe almost a year before she was old enough to get hers. The base Rabbit was extremely basic at first. The interior was as austere as any de-contented 1974 Beetle, and the mechanical components did not have the sophistication or enthusiast appeal that the fuel-injected German VWs of 1977 possessed. I would quite a bit of time in any number of VW Rabbits, Sciroccos and Jettas, even in diesels, and none of them seemed as spartan as that 1975. You could have hopped out of a Type 181 Thing into a base 1975 Rabbit and wondered what the big deal was. It seemed like less had changed from VW’s prewar air-cooled roots than a glimpse at the spec page revealed.
I chose a Rabbit in 1975 for the same reasons as R&T — efficient packaging, great handling, and good fuel economy. What was unknown at the time was reliability, and mine was terrible in that regard.
I didn’t even consider buying the base model, given that it came with drum brakes all around and the back seat didn’t fold down. I paid for the performance package that included front disc brakes, radial tires, and a fold-and-tumble rear seat with cargo cover. I did not opt for the deluxe interior/comfort group, so the car was in fact quite noisy. Also, the bumpers were painted silver as in the base model, and there was no bright trim around any of the windows.
Interesting to compare the issues of VW’s first FWD car with GM’s X-body a scant five years later. The Rabbit’s maladies seem a bit more like ‘death from a thousand cuts’ than the Citation’s rather more pressing (and dangerous) problems.
General Motors had the benefit of hindsight. They could have better learned from the success (and failures), of other manufacturers.
Never buy a car from its first model year!
It still happens today and ruins reputations. Early Giulias and XEs were rushed into production and have far more on them to go wrong than a Rabbit. By the time they got them right, the reputational damage was fatal.
What’s always baffled me is how that works; must be a mind perception that German = reliable and I’ve just had terrible luck against not German = should have seen it coming and I’ll buy German next time…
Over here, German cars are worshipped and over there, many people know they’re a PoS.
Then again, people only lease them until the warranty runs out and the long-term durability is someone else’s problem. The COAL thing doesn’t exist, really.
Why they have such great residual values (Japanese cars fall out of bed…therefore don’t sell as the lease is too much) is simply baffling. The market is nuts.
Bought a basic Rabbit in 1976 for $4995 Canadian and replaced it in 1981 with same car for 10995 – thats inflation