I just posted the initial review of the new 1977 VW Rabbit Diesel as well as a 24,000 mile long term test. But I had forgotten that R&T kept their little energizer bunny for a whole 100k miles and three years. It makes for interesting reading, as there were some serious maladies, the most serious being a damaged crankshaft, rod and main bearings due to an oil supply line to the vacuum pump cracking. There were some other issues too, the result of this being a first year car. R&T’s 1975 gas Rabbit had a lot of teething problems too.
VW addressed these maladies, on both the gas and diesel versions with numerous updates and recalls and lengthened warranties. All I can say is that there’s still a totally outsized number of diesel Rabbits on the road here, so the evidence strongly suggests that most of the issues were addressed. But the Rabbit/Golf was never going to be a Toyota Corolla in ultimate reliability respects, but then the Corolla wasn’t nearly as much fun to drive either.
The diesel Rabbit ended up with a superlative overall cost per mile of 7.1 cents per mile, despite some $3,000 in repair and maintenance costs. How was that possible? Fantastic fuel economy (42 mpg) and even more fantastic resale value. It’s resale value after 100k miles was some $4460 retail (R&T used a wholesale number of $3300). It’s new list price was $4689 (minus sales tax). Essentially no depreciation, thanks to the energy crisis raging in 1981.
And I can confirm this: folks were paying absurd prices for new ones at the time. I saw an ad from someone offering a new one on delivery for $10k, almost double the list price.
It really wasn’t too uncommon for cars to appear to depreciate minimally during that era of often-double-digit inflation.
Depends on the car.
Using the 1981 replacement cost/price ($6300), it still retained 71% after four years and 100k miles. Good luck finding a comparable low depreciation, adjusted for inflation and that excessive mileage.
The initial years of the Kia Soul held value like crazy. Sister’s first off the boat ‘09 sold in 3 days off Craigslist for 62% original value, Aug.‘13 with 99,000 miles. I was floored for her.
My observation of the 2013 used car market was that it was still distorted by the recession and the recovery that was still in progress.
At the opposite end of the size / price / fuel economy spectrum, I was very leisurely shopping for a high trim F-150 crew cab.
I spent a month wrangling with my favored Ford dealer over a 2010 Lariat with a couple months and a couple thousand miles of the 3/36 warranty left. They had a sticky sticker on it for $33K. I had them down to about $30, but really didn’t want to pay over $28.
I had a panic attack one day that it might not fit in my garage, so I went to my local Ford dealer and “borrowed one” for a test fit. The pleasant and smart salesman pulled out a gorgeous 2012 demonstrator Lariat with 5,700 miles it. It was for sale as a new car with a full warranty.
The chat on the way to the house was pleasant, and he asked me if I would buy this truck for the right price. “Absolutely,” I said.
He called me from the office about an hour after we took the truck back. He said $34,500 against a sticker price of $46,370. I signed off on it an hour later. No trade involved, I was expanding my fleet.
I was still getting a newspaper in the years 2013-2016, and every Sunday I could get a charge out of how right side up I was on that truck. My truck was maybe up to 20,000 miles, and I would find dealers offering my truck used for $38,000 and more, with more miles.
I think the market was distorted by three things…
1) Extremely low sales of new cars during the recession translated into low late model used inventory a few years later.
2) Some minor residual from Cash for Clunkers.
3) People like me that couldn’t fathom that you could buy new for unusually close to used prices. If you didn’t at least peek in the showroom, you wouldn’t know.
It wasn’t that way when I went on a buying spree for four cars 2017-2019. Prices were stiff in the showroom, and used bargains, especially on sedans, were easy to find.
Ironic you bring up CFC. Sis got it from parent’s get rid of it Econoline, and I wasn’t including that. Her real world “price” for the car itself was barely more than a grand for almost 100k miles of use. It was insane how it worked out.
I remember Toyota running a print ad in that era showing how their recent economy models retained between 90% and 103% of MSRP after two years, but they neglected to mention that people paid between 110% and 125% of MSRP to buy them.
The closest modern comparison might be the 2nd gen Prius during the Hurricane Katrina gas spike. At the time, it was possible to buy and drive a Prius for a year, then sell it for more than MSRP. And if it was in California with an HOV sticker, much more.
In the auto business, timing might not be everything, but it’s close.
In 2009, Carmax was charging more for used 2006 Honda Civic Si coupes than I paid for my 2007 Civic Si sedan as a new car in March of 2007. If they’d had a 2007 Si Sedan, I believe it would have been even more. Of course the Honda dealer a few hundred feet away had no new cars on the lot at all, so that might have been a factor. It was a mini-fuel crunch that made Hondas unobtainable, but ironically that generation Si was a far better driver’s car than it was an economy car.
A great example of malaise motoring, this car wasn’t reliable, was roomy for the time and compared with something like a Torino, was very expensive to purchase and repair by today’s standards, and didn’t even have air conditioning.
Despite internet fanbois shouting why can’t I just get a basic car like this, no one, faced with this versus a modern econobox, would pick this. A Versa today is about the bottom rung of what can be considered a car (that Mirage is more of a curiosity than a car in the American market.) and a Versa today has power everything, air, automatic, lots of room, two-three times as much power as the Rabbit, and much improved durability and handling.
I’ve seen an ad for a contemporary Regal at $5177, which would have had the V6 and not the V8, but other than fuel economy been a much nicer car. One cannot help but think Buick aimed that ad straitght at buyers of this and other small imports, knowing that most people would think that for $5500 odd dollars, they would much rather have a Regal.
In Atlanta, these did not last as long as they do in other places. I think these lasted until the late 80’s and vanished quickly.
It’s obvious that you haven’t driven one. By 1978 the cars were much improved. I had a safety orange 1978 Golf L and it had a very nice interior that wore like iron. The driver’s seat and ergonomics were the best I have seen before my Golf VII. It was a scream to drive since the little motor made really good torque-so well designed that all you had to do is release the clutch and it would crawl forward with touching the accelerator. The cars were the last that had no power steering and the manual steering was really good, very precise not too hard to park.
They also got 45 miles per US gallon.
My wife’s dad had a 78 Rabbit diesel pick up, got 49 mpg, but you did NOT want to merge into traffic with it. It took a full minute to get to 60!
Many of those late ’70s Rabbits had passive restraints that included a diconcertingly slack shoulder belt and a knee-bash bar that made them absolutely miserable for many people over 5′ 9″ tall. They were not ergonomic triumphs no matter how rosy your lenses are.
I don’t find the low base price of US intermediates particularly compelling. I’m not sure that $5,500 would have really bought a loss-leader Regal. If it did, then GM would have flayed the flesh from your bones for refusing to finance an extra two to five grand for high margin options. Just look at the as-tested prices of those cars when Car and Driver reviewed them. The base price was just a statistic; about as related to reality as the EPA highway numbers of the day. VW was beginning to lose the value argument due to currency exchange rates, but they were losing it to the Japanese and cars like the Omni and Chevette.
Exactly zero people cross shopped a diesel Rabbit and a Buick Regal.
And comparing an economy car from 1977 to one from 2020 is meaningless.
On a trip to Croatia in 2018 I couldn’t believe the number of Mk 2 VW Golfs still around over there. Every one of them were diesels just smoking along!
It’s great to see this posted, but without the intermediary 48,000, 60,000, and 80,000 mile reports, one lacks the proper context as to just how bad the Rabbit Diesel was. I scanned all of these and will attempt to post them here shortly, but just to recap, here are ALL of the the things that broke and required fixin’ in three years, and 100,000 miles of driving.
8,000: Clutch disc replaced (oil)
8,000: Hood release cable
15,000: New clutch disc and pressure plate
15,000: Shift lever breaks
26,000: Frayed v-belt
30,000: Driver’s door latch inoperable
30,000: Blower motor broken
31,378: Oil line to vacuum pump breaks (requires new crank, rod & main bearings)
41,000: Clutch replaced
41,000: Injectors shimmed or replaced
41,000: New CV joint
41,000: New radiator overflow tank (original cracked)
58,000: New head gasket (not torqued to spec during 31,500 rebuild)
58,000: Ignition key breaks in tumbler
58,000: Oil line to vacuum pump breaks (again)
58,000: Hood-release cable (again)
59,438: Heater control valve
61,000? Water in foot wells – doorsill striker plates replaced
67,000: Brake booster pump
67,000: clutch adjusted (Did it ever work properly?)
75,000: Transmission noises (new mainshaft, lower pinion, throwout bearing)
78,000: Spongy brake pedal
78,000: squeaky fan belt
78,000: Water in footwells (again)
82,539: Lights/wipers/heater fan work intermittently
90,000: vent windows replaced
93,000: Ignition switch
Note that many of the items which failed are not exclusive to the Rabbit Diesel, and are likely indicative of the overall poor quality of the Rabbit, at least as it appeared in U.S. configuration. It is also worth mentioning that at least some of the blame for the maladies this Rabbit suffered (head gasket, clutch) can be placed on the dealers for failing to service the car properly. For example, the replacement clutch plate that was installed early on was for a gasser Rabbit, not a diesel. I would assume this was the common dilemma with diesels back then, with dealership mechanics either not giving a damn or being poorly trained.
Of course we’re looking at this car through the jaded eyes of 2020, when we expect even the most rudimentary of transportation devices to go a gazillion miles without any maintenance. Today it would be unfathomable to spend 60% of a car’s transaction price on maintenance, but that’s what happened here. Different expectations were in play back in 1978, but even by the standards of the day, would the Rabbit Diesel have been considered a reliable transportation device? How did it fare in comparison with its oil burning peers at GM, Peugeot, and M-B over the course of 100,000 miles?
Still, it’s quite clear that the Rabbit Diesel was anything but sorted in 1978. Paul’s probably correct that the car did indeed improve with time, but I’m more than a bit skeptical of his claim. Aside from the Pacific Northwest, which like England, has a mid climate that masks many automotive deficiencies, where else are these being used as daily drivers? I’m inclined to think that your own contributor Heath McClure’s odyssey with these cars is more or less par for the course….
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1979-vw-rabbit-diesel-you-cant-get-there-from-here/
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1984-vw-rabbit-diesel-volkswagen-does-it-again/
A 1990 Golf, bought in 1995 with many miles on it, was my transportation for a few years. Though quite a different car from early diesel Rabbits, one frustrating idiosyncrasy that developed was water leaking into the passenger side footwell. At the time I had not ventured into car repairs much beyond maintenance, so did not think to investigate what was likely water pooling in the cowl. My “solution” was to drill holes in the floor. This problem, along with the musty smell that eventually emanated from the carpet, led me to get rid of that car.
My grandmother drove a two-door Golf II in the late 80s and early 90s and I vividly remember being driven to church as a little kid in her car and having to avoid stepping in the footwell as I climbed out of the back seat because it was full of water. As a kid, I thought it was from parking the car in a puddle.
Funny. My Audi Fox leaked so bad rain water would collect in the rear seat foot wells. I have kind of a steep driveway, and one morning, heading to work, a mini wall of water rushed forward, under my seat and nailed me in the back of the legs. Those foot wells had sex later that day with a 1 inch hole saw, under the mat so you didn’t them. Problem solved. On to the next…
Not surprising.I knew a guy, a boat customer of mine, was retired, but was a VW dealer tech during this era. Rabbit diesels were below horrible. They could in the early water cooled days barely make a gas engine stay glued together, let alone a diesel. These cars were junk, from bumper to bumper. Drop the rose colored glasses and slowly back away…
Gave up on European cars long ago. Why? I was tired of being the pee-on! Nothing but a trail of burnt money and shattered dreams. I will take the worst Ford, GM, or Chrysler any day over a pee-on car.
Though I never owned a Golf/Rabbit of this vintage, the article connected with some life experiences.
As a young man who grew up in NJ, my first real (regular schedule, paying taxes) job was as a gas pumper. At that time (early 80s) there were quite a few of these on the road. I recall that Rabbits, whether fueled by gasoline or diesel, required extra care when filling. The shutoff mechanism would be tripped prematurely, or fuel would spill when the car burped due to the restriction in the filler neck mentioned in the article. I remember that some of these required a very slow fill rate.
Fast forward several years, my wife had a gasoline-powered Rabbit when we met. It was a tough car, having been through three previous members of her family, but its age and years of poor maintenance were taking their toll. The last straw was when the hood latch gave out at highway speed, with predictably frightening effect. A friendly police officer rigged it up with zip-tie handcuffs, and, soon after, it was replaced with a Honda.
Finally, about 5 years ago, a guy I visited to buy some parts for my F100 had a yard that resembled a VW junkyard. There was one runner and a bunch of parts donors, and a biodiesel apparatus in his garage, with all the attendant buckets and barrels. He claimed that he had been making his own fuel since that became a thing many years prior, and that the combination of home-brew fuel and the fuel economy of the diesel Rabbit made it very economical transportation long after most of those cars had shuffled off their mortal coil. The low price of the shuffled-off mortal coils must have also been a factor.
My 2006 Jetta Diesel has 140,000 miles, gets nearly 50 mpg on the highway and has been almost perfect with the exception of a new exhaust gas recirculation valve-$650.00. Today’s lemon laws might cover that Rabbit, certainly no one would tolerate so many failures.
48,000 mile test, Pt. 1. (R&T, March 1979)
48,000 mile test, Pt. 2 (R&T, March 1979)
We had a 1979 LS diesel 2dr. sunroof, and it was probably the most problem free car we ever owned. I changed jobs in 1979 and gave up my company car, and needed a cheap coumuter-mobile to make my 100mi. a day run up and down I70 into Denver. Lottsa snow, lottsa tires, lottsa smoke! 150k mi. and very few problems. It ran clean new, but as the miles accumulated it smoked like a school bus. Cars would pass me with their wipers on, pass me on the shoulder, never got used to the embarresment factor. It still never got under 40mpg, even in the cold winters, and actually was faster up the mountains than the Subarus of the day. Aside from freqent oil changes, I remember replaceing the glow plugs twice, started hard in winter, even garaged. One timing belt and water pump. I bought a new 1985 Golf to replace it, and it felt like rocket, ha! I sold the Rabbit to a friend and it became a divorce settlement to his wife, fitting.
Love these long term, high mileage road tests, although there are many unknowing buyers before the results are in. Surprised that there were so many non-maintenance repairs. Had a friend with a long commute that bought a diesel Rabbit in 1979. As with the test car he loved the mileage, but hated the niggling repairs. The earlier Beetles seemed to be far more reliable, though their mileage was not nearly so good and the driving experience not really suited for long, high speed, interstate commutes.
All in all, if I was a VW fanboi, I would have bought a FI Beetle (with A/C/!) for what the Rabbit cost. My overall reliability would have been better (maybe a valve replacement and some service visits for the fuel injection and the a/c system, but needing a new engine at 100,000), but my cost per mile would have been similar taking into account the difference in purchase price.
I would probably have bought a Datsun B210 five speed instead and gotten 40 on the highway.
These are more than “niggling complaints,” but as an owner of a 77 base four door Rabbit, I can confirm this was the life of a Rabbit owner in those days. Brakes, mostly, for me-partly my fault, as I was not versed in the care and feeding of those parts-but also an electrical short that would stop the engine dead on the freeway. Probably water leaking into the fuse box from the radio antenna, although after reading this I wonder about the ignition switch. And then you would fix something and fall in love again.
R & T writes about their dissatisfaction with their dealer experience. Which seems at odds with what people previously reported for the Beetle. So, I ask again, was it the newness of the Rabbit, or did something happen to V of A that they became so much less concerned about customer satisfaction with repair and maintenance?
While R&T’s experience with their diesel Rabbit was appalling, even within the context of the late 1970s, by the early 1980s, VW had figured things out. My father owned a 1984 Rabbit diesel (last year for Gen 1 in the U.S.) for about 8 years and 150,000 miles and had very few problems with it, despite its Westmoreland assembly. It consistently produced mileage in the high 30s-low 40s mpg range, even with the A/C blasting much of the time. Of course, going uphill sometimes required the A/C to be shut off so that all 52 horses could be employed to continue whatever momentum we had, but the car was otherwise enjoyable to drive. In this case, the sudden and total change over to FWD and water-cooled engines and complying with safety and emissions regulations could have been the main source of VW’s problems, as things were well-sorted ten years into the first generation’s production run.
I think their experience wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Perhaps because my ‘77 Scirocco was much more powerful and faster, it seemed to experience many of the same issues as R&T’s Rabbit in a compressed period of time and mileage. I owned it for about 8 months, and in the 10K miles I drove it (from about 40K to 50K miles [I bought it used]) I experienced the CV joint failure, numerous latches disintegrating, the ignition switch failure with associated electrical gremlins, the fuse box failure caused by the water that ran through the fuse box before it pooled on the floor … the list went on. Thanks for the memories!
European cars are like kids. Fun to babysit, but your happy when they go home.
My first new car was a 1980 Scirocco. I had it for 5 years and put on about 50,000 miles. It was stylish, fun and economical. The only thing I ever replaced was a water pump….Perhaps because it was into its 6th year of production there were so few issues. I now own an 81 Scirocco S with 100,000 miles in perfect condition