I'd expect the 40 mpg highway rating to be off by 5-10 mpg unless you drive it like you stole it all the time. All cars have received lower mileage ratings with the new EPA system, especially diesels. To give you an idea, my TDI is now rated at 42 mpg highway but on my last tank I got 46 mpg with about 60% highway driving (around 70 mph).

My 83 is a fun little car.




it's worth saving - it needs a rebuild (220PSI!??? compression)

Here is the before mentioned wabbit...
Covered in thick dust and evidence of the pesky vandals included.


http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...p/IMG_0116.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...p/IMG_0114.jpg

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...p/IMG_0118.jpg

I personally don't like the old VW's. They look like crap! The newer ones are a big improvement. MB's on the other hand have always looked good, at least since the 60's. Just my opinion.

Wow, what are those tires, 165s? They are skinny!

Yep. I mean yep they are skinny. I have no idea... and Yep DA, they are butt ugly.

Not really a fair comparison. The Rabbit is a point-a- to- point-b basic transport vehicle. Nothin' like an MB that was built to last forever. IMO, the early German (round headlight) ones were nicer than the US built ones.

There are a lot of nice ones on the VW Vortex Mk1 forum. But that's not the best place for Rabbit diesel advice.

I know its a SC car, but I see a bit of rust. Make sure you check the strut towers because if they are bad it's not worth it.

Rick

My comment was on the styling of the two makes and not reliability. BMW and Audi used to be butt ugly as well (though not nearly as ugly as VW), but look at them today. IMO MB is the only make that has decent looking old cars.

All that rust needs to form is moisture and there's plenty of that in SC. Salt only accelerates the process.

The only real rust I saw was that little bit on the rear hatch lid and seemed all surface. The paint seems worn off there by keys and such. And if course the Lug bolts too for certain. I actually think it would be worth it just for the motor and transmission myself.

I'd check underneath the car in detail. The strut towers look pretty rusty from one of the photos above.

ugly! wow! you are lucky the vandals didn't do more damage! my old 67 beetle was parked in my barn, and crappy kids busted every piece of plastic and glass on the car. even the speedo lenz... OOOOOOOHHHH it gets my blood boiling just thinking about it... got that car for graduation....
hard to believe it's been sitting on that stack of bricks for that long...
the tires look WAAAAAAY gggggonnnneeee!!! I would put NO MORE than 10 psi in the tires. you do not want to see what an exploding tire will do to a man.
IIWU2M I would get a set of wheels from the junk yard and put a set of tires on them, and take it up there.
is it a turbo?

They import like 2 a year, so its not that impressive. TDI's are always in short supply.

I doubt it is a turbo. Not sure what they brought in back in those days. He tells me its been up on those bricks since 1999. When he was trying to get the wheels off to put tires on. He got all of that one side and couldn't get the other. Using just the tire wrench that came with the car he tells me. They were pretty notorious to be hard to get off sometime on all VW's of that era. I think probably maybe around early 80's one? I need to ask him what year it really is. And those tires are now over 15 years old we figure. They were completely shot in 1999!

It appears they just were kids and hid behind it and busted just the rear tail lenses out so they couldn't be seen by the neighbors who can see the front of the car.

It has the square headlights of the 1981 plus... so I would guess it is a simple 1.6 Liter engine of that era. Probably a 81-84? However it does have the rear wiper of the 82 vintage I think so that might date it better

They were commonly know to get 45 mpg city/up to 57 mpg highway

I believe the claimed horsepower was to be increased quite a bit in the 2009s. Plus once again somewhat less fuel milage. I personally found the older tdi engines adaquate for our needs. Fuel milage dropped a little about 2004 as well from the original tdi. Now this?

Is volkswagon going backwards from what the market wants? I believe to help the milage recover a little the standard manual transmission was to be a six speed on these. I would still fear their automatics unless something has changed big time with them. Just my opinions.

Seems to me like most of the car manufacturers are..everyone complains about gas prices yet all the new models come out with more horsepower, etc. Heck, the Accord's numbers have gone down a good amount (although this could be the epa's fault)
These days it seems the only way to get an economical car is to settle for some econobox...however, we are all lucky to have economy AND full size cars!