When I first saw this GTI, I thought “that’s a beautiful Mk1 GTI,” immediately followed by “they want $15k with 216,000 miles?!” which is the exact response the seller is discouraging in his ad, as I later found out. What I also found out as I read further and drooled over the pictures was that this GTI has just about everything new on it. Seriously, it’s like new under there with a rebuild with a fresh bottom end, all suspension, rebuilt brakes, and an interior redone in new-old-stock GTI red cloth. It’s pretty much perfect, and the mudflaps put me over the damn edge (I put some on my E28 M5 this winter and am now obsessed). This is the best non-original, like-new GTI out there.
Warning!
We have 15 years of archives. Links older than a year may have been updated to point to similar cars available to bid on eBay.Tag: Rabbit
Way back in time, before the proliferation of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook – indeed, before the Internet really got off its feet at all, dreams were made not with by-the-minute browser refreshes eagerly anticipating the next clever comment or picture of someone eating an avocado. If you weren’t actually traveling the automotive scene, you were totally reliant on your monthly delivery of new automobile magazines. In high school, I had at one point four different subscriptions and poured over the details of every single car that graced the pages of what was my Bible. But it was in the mid 1990s that I stumbled across a magazine that really spoke to me much more than the BMW-loving Car and Driver or the fairly vanilla Automobile; I found a copy of European Car. It was a complete revelation to me, to see the cars that not only I dreamt about but could actually afford parts for. Nearly as good, if not perhaps better, than the feature articles were the advertisements. The “Dr. Feelgood”s of the European tuner scene, companies like Techtonics Tuning and Total Audi Performance spoke to my specific needs in ways that the mainstream magazines couldn’t. And within those advertisements, one particular company became something of a legend among a small group of friends who all shared the enthusiasm for Volkswagens. That company was AutoBahn Designs, better known as ABD Racing – and what they had created was an absolute monster. In the days before the ubiquitous VR-swap for VWs, dropping a 16V into the nose of your car was about as hot as you could get. But ABD took that recipe to the next level with a custom-built 2.1 16V with massive compression and side-draft carburetors. But it was really what they put it in that set them apart, as ABD chose a Caddy for the massive build. The result, stripped out, painted up and dominating the import drag scene, still gives me goose bumps when I see it all these years later:
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit Pickup ABD 2.1 16V on eBay
Comments closed
When I was young, my family traveled out to Michigan. The year was 1984, and on the trip we went to see some vintage car racing as my father is a pretty big Shelby nut. There were plenty of Cobras and GT350s ripping up the track with V8s bellowing away that day, but what stuck in my mind more was a demonstration that was put on by Volkswagen of America. There were 5 or 6 then-new GTis that were put through their paces, and the particular corner we were sitting at had the train of these hot hatches popping over curbs, dangling a wheel in the air as they slithered through the corners. Sounding more like a pack of angry hornets, they made more of an impression on me than the rumbling Ferrari-killers, and to this day I still smile and think of that day every time I see a GTi. More than once in my ownership of a 1984 example, I even tried to imagine the train of GTis racing around that course on my daily commute to school to the chagrin of all of the other drivers on the road. But the best way to contemplate that magical day in my memory is to check out a race-ready Rabbit:
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1984 Volkswagen GTi on eBay
2 Comments
This Mint Green Rabbit was an estate find and the title is still in the original owner’s name giving you the chance to be just the second owner after 35 years. Its condition is almost as mint as its exterior, having covered just 46k miles in those three and half decades. It’s not perfect, with a few small rust corners that show repair/repaint attempts and a fading hatch, but overall it’s a very pretty 4-door Rabbit. Somewhere along the lines it sounds like the original manual was swapped out for an automatic transmission, a questionable choice but somewhat in accordance with its history of low use by old folks. The color, the vintage, and the condition make it the perfect car for the well-coiffed hipster or a nostalgic grandma.
Click for details: 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit on eBay
1 Comment
Looking at what the Volkswagen Golf has become today, it’s rather remarkable when you look back at the Giugiaro-penned two box design of which it originated from. This 1977 Rabbit represents the earlier years of the Mk1. It’s a very simple car, with few options or adornments. However, you can find beauty in its simplicity, from the pressed steel wheels to the slimmer Euro bumpers. For sale in Georgia, this original VW was purchased new in Pennsylvania and is up to date on its servicing. For the vintage VW collector, they rarely come nicer than this.
