In 1978, Volkswagen of America opened a new factory in Pennsylvania to build the VW Rabbit (the North American version of the original Golf), and kicked off a questionable and commercially unsuccessful attempt to re-tailor this groundbreaking subcompact hatchback to better suit American tastes. This well-preserved 1979 Rabbit C shows off one of the most notorious results: a color-coordinated baby blue ensemble that people were still making fun of decades later.
“Jumping the shark” refers to the point where a popular work becomes a caricature of itself through foolish creative decisions and desperate attempts to hold onto its audience with shameless gimmicks. It’s an allusion to a now-infamous September 1977 episode of the sitcom Happy Days in which the Fonz (Henry Winkler), still wearing his trademark leather jacket, water skis over a captive shark. Radio personality Jon Hein popularized the phrase in the ’80s, later parlaying it into a website and a 2002 book, Jump the Shark: When Good Things Go Bad.
If you read popular accounts of Volkswagen’s ill-fated American escapade, they will inevitably talk about the baby blue Rabbits and point to them as the embodiment of everything that went wrong. VW built a U.S. assembly plant, the first foreign automaker to do so since the 1920s; hired former Chevrolet general marketing manager James W. McLernon as the new president of Volkswagen of America (VWoA); and tried hard to Americanize both the Rabbit and its merchandising strategy. This was not a great success, and Volkswagen eventually shut down its Pennsylvania plant for good about a decade after the factory first came online.
In retrospect, VWoA probably erred in even bringing a blue-on-blue car to its initial press preview in the summer of 1978. It wasn’t like VW hadn’t offered bright colors before, including various light pastel blues — previous color options for the German-built Rabbit had included Mars Red, Riyad Yellow, Bali Green, and Miami Blue, and a full 1977 lineup of imported VWs in all the available paint choices would’ve look like somebody dumped out a giant bag of M&M’s. However, conservative silver over black would probably have made a better impression on the journalists assembled for the introduction of the American-made 1979 Rabbit.
The Westmoreland-built Rabbits were immediately distinguishable by a new grille with rectangular headlights and new side marker lights, but where the new American-built cars differed most from the German-built ones was inside.
Previously, Rabbit interiors had been much less colorful, even on brightly colored cars. Some model years had offered a navy blue option, and/or “Parchment” (white), but black, brown, and tan were more common, with the paint on the doors offering the main splash of interior color.
Starting in 1979, the U.S.-built Rabbits offered fully color-coordinated interiors: the dash, steering wheel, door panels, headliner, and carpets now matched the upholstery. This had been customary practice for many American cars for years, but it was a jarring addition to the sober, sensible Golf/Rabbit, and the contemporary car magazines immediately took performative offense. Bill Hartford of Popular Mechanics complained:
Inside is where you really see the Americanization of the Rabbit. Rear-seat speaker ports are built in, colors are coordinated, carpet is thick and, overall, the interior is comfortable, but puffy. In fact it’s downright tacky if you tout the more taut teutonic touch.
Car and Driver editor Larry Griffin sneered:
If the outside is little changed, the interior of the U.S. version goes all the way. The Custom we tested had a pale-blue-with-a-hint-of-gray interior. Somewhere along the line someone decided that Americans like color-coordinated interiors, so by George, American Rabbits will have color-coordinated interiors.
There are four colors available, but everywhere we looked in ours, the thing was blue. Blue seats, blue carpet, blue dash, blue steering wheel, blue door panels, blue armrests, blue window winders, blue shoulder harnesses, blue wiper and turn-signal stalks, blue door latches, blue on blue, heartache of heartaches. At least you can’t say VW isn’t consistent, even if you wind up feeling you’re enveloped in some kind of institutional womb.
Personally, I think the blue leatherette upholstery looks fine (although the non-crushed velour cloth upholstery would be much more comfortable), and I find the blue dash and carpeting inoffensive; it’s only in the smaller details (like the blue plastic seat belt reels, the blue turn signal lever, and the pasty blue mouse fur of the package shelf) where the color coordination gets somewhat bilious. However, the color-keyed interior gave critics something to latch onto and point at even where they couldn’t really find anything else wrong, and it came to symbolize their anxiety over an Americanized version of such a distinctly German car.
That anxiety was very evident in the Car and Driver commentary. At the press introduction, VWoA provided both German-built and U.S.-built Rabbits for journalists to sample. While in subsequent years VWoA would soften the U.S.-built Rabbit’s suspension at some cost in handling precision, that hadn’t happened yet: Company officials patiently explained that the U.S.-built 1979 Rabbit had the same spring and damping settings, identical tires, and the same steering and suspension parts as its German-built counterpart. Nonetheless, while C/D‘s Larry Griffin said the Rabbit was still “an absolute delight to drive at any practical or impractical speed,” he couldn’t help insisting that the German-built car felt “smoother and more sophisticated” than its American counterpart.
Griffin attributed the difference in feel to “normal manufacturing variations,” but it seems just as likely that his perception of the Wolfsburg-built car was colored by a kind of placebo effect German-ness. He knew the German-built car was German, and for buff book editors writing for a buff book audience, that made it safe to praise, whereas the U.S.-built car was obliged to prove that it wasn’t just a miniature Chevy Malibu in a brightly colored bunny suit. (Car and Driver was actually reasonably fond of the contemporary Malibu if was equipped with the F41 suspension, but that was because they saw it as a welcome deviation from the domestic norm; they deemed it praiseworthy despite its Americanness, not because of it.)
Aside from the color combinations, the other area where the latest Rabbit seemed distinctly Americanized was in its merchandising strategy. Car and Driver sniffed that VW had entered the “decor-group war that Detroit has been waging for years.” As before, there were three trim levels — base, “C” (Custom), and “L” (Deluxe) — but there was now also a host of convenience groups and custom decor packages.
As with the colors, this approach wasn’t as new as contemporary reviewers made out. When the Rabbit debuted for 1975, VWoA had grouped important features like front disc brakes and windshield washers into a couple of extra-cost option packages so that they could advertise a base price of $2,999. At the time, Car and Driver had grumbled, “the base Rabbit is a real stripper, meaning you have a $3499 car before you get what used to be considered essential.”
However, once VWoA started also offering the U.S.-built Rabbit with chrome lip moldings, vanity mirrors, and stalk-mounted Auto-Cruise, alarm bells began to sound. The blue car pictured here is the mid-level Rabbit C, which had a comparatively mild case of Detroititis. A top-of-the-line Rabbit LS (a Deluxe model with the Deluxe Decor Group) now boasted a distinctly Caprice/LTD-like combination of crushed velour upholstery, 18 oz. cut-pile carpeting, and woodgrain dash applique, so there was certainly some cause for concern if you were allergic to that sort of thing.
There’s a tendency to blame this Chevrolet-like merchandising approach on Jim McLernon, and seeing Volkswagen brochures pushing option groups with names like the “Z56 Special Instrumentation Package” certainly suggested a strong Chevrolet influence. However, McLernon was primarily a manufacturing executive; VW hired him in 1976 to oversee the establishment of the Westmoreland assembly operation, and then promoted him to president and CEO of the reorganized VWoA in July 1978. Most of the product decisions for 1979 had been made by then, and it seems like VW hired McLernon because they wanted to emulate Chevrolet, rather than that they emulated Chevrolet because of him.
Over the years, the stars of Happy Days have often pointed out that whatever the infamous shark-jumping episode might have said about the show’s creative energy, it was hardly the end, or even the beginning of the end; Happy Days went on for six more very successful seasons. Volkswagen was not so lucky. Initially, things looked promising: Total U.S. Rabbit sales went from 149,170 for the 1978 model year to 214,877 for 1979. However, sales then dipped to 191,716 for 1980, 111,647 for 1981, and a grim 83,058 for 1982. (These totals include the Karmann-built Rabbit convertible, which was still imported rather than built in Westmoreland.)
It’s tempting to assume that Volkswagen floundered because it tried to get too American, losing touch with its German roots. That seems to have been the conclusion in Wolfsburg, where the Volkswagen board was only too happy to lay the blame on McLernon, forcing him out in September 1982. Ironically, to replace him, they rehired Noel Phillips, who had been VWoA executive vice president for sales and marketing from 1978 to 1980, and was probably at least as responsible as McLernon for the Americanized candy-coated, color-keyed, crushed-velour-upholstered product strategy.
However, I think the bigger problems for Volkswagen lay elsewhere. The Golf/Rabbit was a brilliant package, but Americans were much more likely than European buyers to regard it as a cheap economy car, and balked at its hefty price tag. The point of moving production to Westmoreland was supposed to be to keep the strong Deutschmark from driving up prices, but the U.S.-built 1979 cars listed for about $200 more than the imported ’78s. A 1979 Rabbit C five-door like the blue car pictured earlier started at $5,257, which was around 15 percent more than a Toyota Corolla, a Honda Civic CVCC, or a Dodge Colt — a big jump for a lot of buyers. A 1980 Rabbit C, like the green one pictured above and below, was up to $5,890.
The Rabbit was economical and fun to drive — even the softened early ’80s cars were still noticeably more poised than a contemporary Corolla, and in a completely different league from small domestic offerings — but it didn’t have that traditional Beetle build quality. The Rabbit’s early teething pains had been severe, and the later models still left a lot to be desired when it came to reliability. My family’s Westmoreland-built 1983 Rabbit was as hilariously undependable a car as I’ve ever encountered, and Consumer Guide warned early ’80s buyers to watch out for “excess oil consumption, oil leaks, and excessive premature valvetrain wear” as well as cooling problems that “seem to defy correction.” Parts and competent service tended to be expensive too.
Also, by the early ’80s, the Rabbit was looking old, and Americans didn’t seem keen to accept it as another perennial that could continue indefinitely with modest updates. The Beetle was of course an even older design, but its heyday had been so long after its original development that it had seemed to stand entirely outside the maelstrom of mainstream automotive trends. The Golf/Rabbit was surrounded by other contemporary designs in the same mode (including some outright imitators), some of which were fresher and cheaper, and which sometimes made a smoother transition to the three-box sedans and coupes American buyers increasingly preferred. Volkswagen chairman Carl Hahn said defensively, “We don’t want to offer the customer a new shape every day,” but, judging by VW’s 1980s market share relative to Honda and Toyota, it was the wrong call for the U.S. market.
In the early ’80s, VWoA gradually backed away from the bright colors, although there was still more interior color coordination than purists liked, and Car and Driver complained that some Rabbit interior materials felt like “early Kmart” compared to the European Golf.
The belated U.S.-market GTI, introduced in 1983, could still be positively gaudy. The 1984 car pictured above and below is bright red on the outside, but has a color-keyed blue interior with red door accents and vivid “hotstripe” upholstery.
Enthusiasm for the GTI gave Rabbit sales a mild bump for its final model year, to 115,853 cars (including convertibles), but the Rabbit still lagged well behind the Civic, Corolla, and Nissan Sentra.
In 1984, Volkswagen retooled its Westmoreland plant to build the U.S.-market second-generation Golf, but the plant was now running at less than half its capacity, which made it a money-loser. Attempts to reassert VW’s Germanic character, as the buff books had wanted, failed to produce any lasting improvement in sales; by 1987, U.S. Golf and Jetta sales were down to 76,400 cars, of which only 66,696 were built in the States. VW abandoned its plans to open a second U.S. factory in Sterling, Michigan, and finally announced in late 1987 that Westmoreland Assembly would be closed. The plant ceased operation in July 1988 after producing almost 1.2 million vehicles in 10 years.
There are some people who never really let Volkswagen live down these color-coordinated American-built, Americanized Rabbits. However, they still have their fans. The Whisper Blue 4-speed car pictured here was offered in August 2024 by Cascade Motors in Portland for an eye-opening $12,999. I think they might have gotten it too.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1975 VW Golf Mk1/Rabbit – The Most Influential Global Compact Car Of The Past 50 Years (by Paul N)
Vintage 48,000 Mile Test: 1976 VW Rabbit – How VW Handed Over The US Import Market to the Japanese (by Paul N)
COAL: 1980 VW Rabbit – Hellish Ride in GTI Guise via Westmoreland! (by Rich Baron)
1981-1984 VW Rabbit: A Westmoreland Built Hare, Still Close To Home (by slant six)
Vintage R&T Comparison: 1981 Ford Escort, Mazda GLC, VW Rabbit And Honda Accord — FWD Compacts For The ’80s (by Rich Baron)
Curbside Classic: 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI — When Fun Hopped Across The Ocean (by Eric703)
It’s funny to learn that the rabbit in Baby Blue was almost proverbial.
When these US versions occasionally made their way “back” to the Old Land (yes, that happened sometimes), they were almost always white or beige – mostly the latter.
Thank you for the insightful explanation of the idiom “to jump the shark”. I’ve always wondered where this strange figure of speech comes from.
Even when explained, the idiom is still somewhat mystifying if you’re not familiar with Happy Days, which was a huge phenomenon in the U.S. at the time and for a good while afterward. Ironically, the phrase “jump the shark” is probably much more familiar today than the show, which I’m not sure many Americans under 35 have heard of.
I’m with Midsommar here… I never thought about where this phrase came from. And to your point, I do find it a bit puzzling, likely since I never watched Happy Days (though I am familiar with it), and have no memory of the shark episode. Thanks for the explanation.
+1 on explaining “Jump the shark”.
While the words make sense to any English speaker, it’s hard to envisage being close enough to a shark to jump it. And even harder to envisage why you would want to. While we can google the idiom, it takes CC to really explain it.
The water-skiing stunt was kind of the epitome of a common problem in older American TV: Various shows would have a comic relief supporting character, sometimes with a distinctive catch phrase, that got a good reaction from the audience. TV producers, especially in the ’70s, are a shameless lot, so when that happened, they would start insisting on playing up the supporting character, often at the expense of what were supposed to be the main characters and the main themes. As the comic relief supporting character became more central, the writers would begin looking for more absurd situations to put them in.
The reason why the shark-jumping episode became notorious was not so much that a character water skied over a shark, but that it was such a bizarre moment for the show and the character. “Happy Days” was a sitcom about a middle-class family in the American Midwest in the late ’50s. The Fonz was a greaser, a high school dropout with a cool leather jacket who lived over the main characters’ garage. So, having him in Los Angeles, water skiing (in his leather jacket!), doing silly stunts, was not only preposterous, it was a huge departure from what the show was supposedly about, and it was only done because the Fonz had become a popular character and they figured it would get a laugh. (Also, actor Henry Winkler had mentioned that he could actually water ski.) It was a particularly shameless gimmick.
There are a bunch of examples of the same kind of thing (many of which would probably be just as obscure today if you were not versed in old American sitcoms), which is why Jon Hein was able to coin the phrase: The etymology was odd, but it provided a handy term for a familiar phenomenon.
I owned a ’73 Super Beetle in Marina blue. The Whisper blue Rabbit hue is literally a pale imitation. The Beetle seats were a darker blue perforated leatherette. Perforation has asthetic appeal
and enhances comfort and ventilation. The Westmoreland Rabbit came with a slippery looking vinyl, to “better suit American tastes” apparently.
Just these two departures from the German built Beetle would have been a deal breaker for me.
The Beetle was a solid and very well built car that didn’t look or feel cheap and had impressive reliability and excellent dealer service (for its era). The Rabbit (Golf) was weaker that the Beetle in all respects except driving performance. While the Rabbit was more solid feeling and nice driving than American and (most) Japanese competitors, it was a lot more expensive to buy and a lot less reliable than the Japanese equivalents. A loaded Rabbit was much more similar in price to a well-equipped (and much larger) Malibu or Fairmont, and also more expensive than the more luxurious (and reliable) Accord. Thus a long-time Beetle owner entering the VW dealer during the Rabbit era was in for a let-down, while an American or Japanese brand cross-shopper was in for a severe sticker-shock. Too bad VW learned the wrong Chevrolet lesson – as it took Chevy less than a year to turn the economy Corvair into the sporty Corvair Monza, but it took VW four years to take the expensive/economy Rabbit into the expensive/sporty GTI.
Well, eight years, really: The Rabbit was introduced in the U.S. for 1975, the Rabbit GTI didn’t arrive until 1983, although its European counterpart had been on sale for years by then.
The late 70s, early 80s were a time of high inflation. Perhaps VW opened the factory at the wrong time. And they probably underestimated the Japanese manufacturers.
At the end of the 80’s my parents traded their Peugeot 305 for a VW Golf Mk1, presumably a mid to early-80’s model, in a “delightful” fleshy-beige with tan vinyl interior. As much as the Mk1 had a long life in South Africa, this car did not spend many years with us. It became known as the “Thursday car” for it’s habit of needing to be taken to the dealership many a Thursday for many and varied issues. It’s galloping rust problems resulted in bits of steel being riveted over fast forming holes. After a couple of years it was gone, replaced by a bright yellow Toyota Corolla 1.8SE, and went down in the family history as one of the worst cars my parents ever owned.
It should be mentioned the Rabbit pickup was a Westmoreland original. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it was only made in the US, unless some other VW assembly plants like maybe in South America produced them as well.
The Rabbit pickup was initially exclusive to Westmoreland, but the VW Caddy (same thing with a slightly longer bed) was subsequently built in Sarajevo, and a South African version was built through I think 2007.
My ‘79 Rabbit 2-door was white, but the interior was all blue. It was the most basic model, I think. Fun little car that served me well for several years during the late 80s and early 90s. It eventually succumbed to rust. The driver’s door sagged on it’s hinges and required a lift to get it to latch.
Maybe VW should have developed the Rabbit/Golf just like the Beetle. Keep it the same and improve reliability over time. Market it as a quality German car like a BMW or Mercedes but at a much lower cost. Don’t go head-to-head with the Japanese. Be happy with your niche. The days of being the no. 1 import were gone.
My ’77 Rabbit was very reliable but I only held on to it for 3 years. I sold it to my brother and he got the dreaded fusebox leak which included the auto-start feature. It shorted out and started on it’s own.
Ultimately auto executives tend to be promoted for being bullies and BS artists, possibly mix those qualities with a good golf game.
People forget why the Beetle was so sucessful. It was CHEAP. Like cheapest thing on the market. And unlike other crap from Austin, MG, later British Leyland, Renault, Fiat, etc it was RELIABLE. If you did have a problem it was engineered to be diy fixable and parts availability was great. Unlike those other foreign cars. No
Well VW screwed up with the Golf/Rabbit. Priced way too high. Cutting edge design was half baked and unreliable junk. Parts availablity sucked and were expensive. Stuff like fuel injection and a clean sheet design from the air cooled stuff left vw mechanics stumped.
The Rabbit/Golf didnt fail because of such silly superficial things like velour and woodgrain. It failed cause it was a shit product that was priced too high. Also competion from the Japanese was stiff, back in the 1960s, the Beetle’s heyday the competion was a joke. Look at my earlier list, the Beetle was a far superior product to those cars. A Rabbit vs an Accord, Corolla or Sentra, it was inferior in almost every way except maybe driving dynamics. And Americans have proven time and again that is not a priority
The irony of VW pricing is that the dealer network stuck to MSRP; there was no negotiating on a new VW. You either paid MSRP, or you didn’t buy a VW. This worked fine for the Type 1 since it was a decent enough value and the reliability, as stated, was much better than its contemporaries.
But for the more expensive, way less reliable Golf/Rabbit? No way, and that, alone, went a long way to explaining VWoA’s sales issues. If only the Westmoreland Rabbits had been priced more in line with what the competition was charging for a similarly equipped car, it might have stood a chance.
I remember that baby blue bunny very well. I was shopping for my first new car at the time.
My father had a chocolate-brown ’77 Rabbit made in Germany. The ’79 Westmoreland model was a pale (blue) imitation.
I bought instead a ’79 Dodge Omni that cost 15% less and had a bigger engine, a 1.7L four built by… VW.
I remember this shift very well. My sister’s first car after marriage was a 77 Rabbit. I got to take that car for an extended drive one time, and even though it was several years old, it was a hoot to drive. Then they bought a used 81 Rabbit, in maybe 1983. I immediately noticed the vibe shift. Where the 77 had been very Germanic with its utilitarian black interior (including the gobs of cheap black plastic that was in vogue among Euro manufacturers at that time) the American Rabbit was all color keyed, a black car with a pale gray vinyl interior. It had the one thing that none of your photos show, and that was the most American touch of all – full wheel covers instead of the painted wheels with a center cap. Like the attached photo.
I understand that German cars took a beating because of exchange rates in the 70s, but it seemed that VW never understood what it was. Its German-ness was the reason people wanted it. I still remember being disappointed that my new 85 GTI was US built. There was a mystique that German-built cars were better built than American-built cars, and this was an era when “made in USA” was not much of a selling point on cars. If VW couldn’t compete on price, they could be a lower-cost alternative that was as rewarding for the driver as a BMW or Audi. On the rare occasions when they have hit on this formula they have done fairly well.
The ’81 Rabbit was one of my numerous test drives as I sought to buy my first brand new car. I wanted to love it because I thought the design was brilliant, but it was only “ok”, the same conclusion I came to with the Escort, Monza, Alliance, Omni and Citation. Didn’t impress me like the Civic, Accord, 510, 626 and Corolla where it felt like one solid piece of “car harmony”. Not saying because of where it was built, but how it was built.
I wasn’t really exposed to any Rabbits when they were normal everyday cars, but as classics I think people are not so put off by the color coordination specifically of the interior. It’s all the more impressive now to have a 40+ year old car with all the matching colors in great shape. And of course, most modern fans of these are either turning them into simulated GTIs, or dumping them on the ground with adjustable coilovers or air bags, so factory spring rates mean nothing.
The interior material quality is a real let down for US made cars. I have an 80 Scirocco and had an 84 US GTI. The GTI was creaky and plasticy, where the Scirocco feels much higher quality inside. Same goes for the German made Jetta. The GTI had that same hard, super fading and prone to disentegrate plastic rear side panels that the 70s GM cars had (also what the center console was made of), I’ve never seen that inside a German mk1. There is also the cardboard headliner with falling fabric in US cars, vs vinyl headliner with bows in the Scirocco/Jetta/German Rabbit. Everything just feels a bit chintzy, and adds up. So while I kind of like the colors, I’d rather any of the German built versions
Happy Days started when I was in college and I’m sure I’ve never seen more than 60-90 seconds of one or two episodes. I had absolutely no idea what the term “jumped the shark” actually means, let alone its origin. So thanks for the education. As always, CC is a learning experience.
As for the Westmoreland Rabbit, I had a friend who had a later Diesel example in a pretty fancy trim level; the interior felt so different from early German cars it was hard to believe it was the same car. When I was looking for a small hatchback, new, in late 1981 I didn’t even consider a Rabbit, though that had more to do with the miserable reliability of my German-made Scirocco. So I ended up with a 98% color coordinated Honda Civic. Almost all interior and exterior surfaces were red but I think the steering wheel and gearshift knob were black. Our 2015 Golf is 100% black inside.
Part of the “Malibuization” of the US-built Rabbit were these optional full wheel covers. They really enhanced the effect of “going native”.
One important thing to note: VW has made an essentially string of large losses in the US ever since the Rabbit arrived. They regularly lose hundreds of millions of dollars in the US market every year. That has brought them extremely close to pulling out of the US market totally, especially in the early aughts. But they decided to give it one more big push with the huge investment to build the new assembly plant in Chattanooga and develop cars specifically for the US, such as the Atlas and large Passat. But none of it has turned around the losses, and this past year(2025) has been very painful, with a 13% drop in sales.
This is coming at a difficult time for VW overall, as they are hurting globally, especially in China, as well as in other parts of the world. US losses are a continued drain in what is the world’s most profitable market.
Their decision to launch Scout was made during the EV-fever years and now looks quite suspect. In fact VW has just announced that they are cutting expenses at Scout and have pushed production back a year. But one wonder if it may even be scrapped if VW continues to have a bad year in 2026.
What killed the golden goose for VW in the US? The Beetle ended just as the Japanese became ascended. Cars like the Corolla, which arrived in 1968, undercut the Beetle in price, had significantly better performance, economy, and interior space and of course were extremely reliable. The Rabbit never really had a chance in the US against the Japanese. VW had no clue about how to engineer a totally new car with the kind of reliability the Japanese had.
Never mind the Scout. VW has the rude awakening of the ID-Buzz’s failure in the marketplace to deal with currently. And both are EV retro’s.
The success of the Beetle was due to a confluence of factors that were temporary. The Beetle started gaining traction in the 1950s. It was odd, slow, but also reliable, and thrifty. VW had the foresight (then–that is what I marvel at–THEN THEY HAD FORESIGHT, LOL!!!!) to establish stringent standards for dealers (something Lexus would reprise three decades later), and to establish parts depots, to make sure that in the event their cars had issues, they could be repaired quickly.
The merits of VW caught on with early adopters and/or frugal people (like my father). The early VWs held their value VERY well–my father sold 3 of 4 Beetles for more than he paid…
Then the Beetle was small slice of the market, so it could grow. Also, labor costs in Germany were not as high, and the dollar was strong, keeping the Beetle reasonably priced until 1970. The other foreign cars aspired to do more, but delivered less, and had poor support–until the 1965 Toyota Corona, the opening shot, followed by the Datsun 410/510, and the rest is history.
Unlike the Beetle’s success, Toyota’s success was, and has not been, contingent on a favorable environment. Toyota has offered vehicles that offer, or have the perception of, good value, and good reliability/durability. Toyotas may be bland (I used to say this, and it was true), but they are also, IMO, the most VICE-FREE cars. Least annoying. Least quirky. Turn the key, put in D or shift into gear, and go. Done.
Toyota works hard to offer value to the customer. GM, and others, have tried (and largely succeeded, at least GM) in emulating the Toyota “process”. GM just continues to nickel and dime things, however. Gotta pay Ms. Barra’s salary. Mr Toyoda makes a lot less, and his customers make out better.
So, as the world changes, Toyota will continue to be successful, at least more successful than its competitors. VW has been just another car company since the Mk2 Golf failed to launch.
The Rabbit and especially MK2 Golf/Jetta were brilliant cars. Rabbit was not ready for prime time. Mk2 should’ve have been more price competiive–it could have turned things around.
The original Rabbit cost considerably more than a 3 to 5 year old Beetle cost when new, so perception was it was “expensive”. It had teething issues. It could not live up the Beetle’s reputation.
The Beetle was simple–and much of its reliability was due to the ABSENCE of content. No auto. No A/C. No power steering or brakes. No radiator or water pump. None of that stuff to break down. In 1950s and 1960s America, when people were not as soft, it was not a big deal. In 1970s and 1980s, it was.
VW continues to shoot itself in the foot by not providing support (as in parts) for surviving Mk1 and Mk2 Golfs, which do have a following.. I’m a big fan of the Mk2, I owned three, my father had one, great cars, but when experienced, competent shops started cobbling parts together because new or good ones are NLA (no longer available), that was a sign for me it was time to abandon VW and move forward to a Japanese classic car–better built, and better support–and the original Miata is just one example. TOYOTA pickups and 4Runners are another. BMW and Mercedes. They support their older cars (ever wonder why there are so few 1980s Audis on Bring a Trailer? Got parts?)
Good article, thanks for the oppty to comment.
I’ve never heard that saying about the shark before, so I’ve learned something new today. Also, I don’t get what was so shocking about a light blue Rabbit? Personally, I’ve always liked these VW’s and love them in colors like that light blue. It also reminds me of the Bugs from decades before. And lastly, I totally don’t get what the big deal (bad??) was about color coordinated interiors. Man what I’d do for a car today that had nice interior color offerings besides black, gray or tan.
Nothing should be ‘shocking’ about that shade of blue. “Marina Blue” was a very popular color on early 1970’s Beetles, so it stood to reason that light blue shade should work on a Rabbit.
Sorry, but as someone who was of driving age in the mid-1970s, color-coordinated interiors were absolutely in style. Given that the number one selling car in the US at the time, the Olds Cutlass, not only had color-matched interiors but upped the ante with the compaticolor option for even more interior pieces to be color-matched, it’s no surprise that VW would have copied this for the American market. The comment about using a (bland) silver car for the introduction sounds like it was made viewing the 70s through the goggles of today’s boring car colors as opposed to someone who lived it.
Wasn’t part of the problem with the Americanized Rabbit related to VW’s decision to set up their factory in western Pennsylvania — in the heart of “union country”?
The company that my dad worked for made a similar (bad) decision to build a new factory in the same general area of western PA; also the late ’70’s – early 80’s. That plant was cursed from day one — it never operated as planned/hoped. The workforce unionized immediately after opening, and was a huge obstacle to progress. The company eventually wound up completely shutting it down just a few years after it was opened.
My dad had a 1981 or 1982 Rabbit manufactured in New Stanton. He bought it brand-new at the end of the model year, in-part because of the huge discounts and rebates offered to move out the old inventory. The Rabbit was black with a matching black interior and NO air conditioning. Behind my dad’s back, we jokingly referred to it as “the oven”. Other than being unbearable to ride in on hot days, the Rabbit was reasonably reliable, and my dad kept it for over 10 years.
I don’t know, the single most solidly built, reliable, and durable car I’ve ever owned was also built by UAW, in Marysville Ohio. A 1990 Honda Civic LX currently with 333,000 miles on its faded but unbothered chassis. I always think of this car when the UAW is called upon as the scourge of American auto manufacturing.
Honda’s plants in the US are not unionized.
I’ll defend the color-keyed interior as well. I bought one of the first Westmoreland Rabbits in October 1978. It was just like the one Aaron featured here (C model in baby blue with a matching all-vinyl interior), except it was a 2-door. I was intending to purchase a leftover 1978 model, but the more basic ’79s were a little cheaper. I traded in my 1975 Rabbit along with my wife’s 1975 Corolla.
I always thought the 1975’s interior color scheme was discordant: white headliner, exposed painted metal on the pillars and door panels (yellow in my case), gray cloth seating surfaces and on the felt-like partial carpeting, and black everywhere else. To my eye, the all blue interior on the ’79 was more pleasing, if a little extreme in hindsight (even the shift lever knob and boot were blue).
This car was somewhat more reliable than the disastrous ’75, which I’ve described in detail here before.
In 1979, there was still plenty of “Buy American” sentiment among US car buyers. But this car literally had “Volkswagen” written all over it, and that wasn’t working for the “Buy American” crowd.
Meanwhile, just down “dealer row”, your friendly Dodge and Plymouth dealers were selling cars that looked a whole lot like Rabbits. And even though they were largely designed in Europe, and had European engines, they were perceived as far more “American” than Westmoreland Rabbits. If memory serves, they were also quite a bit cheaper. I’m pretty sure the Omni and Horizon moved a ton more units, and had a rather successful 12 year run.
Wasn’t that dark red velour interior marketed as a “Champagne Edition”? I remember seeing those editions back then in various colors. Very plush.
German built cars were noted for their functional and rather spartan teutonic interiors as opposed to the color keyed
interiors that appeared in American built Rabbits and turned off the “purists” who felt the American inspired interiors
was a total betrayal of what German cars were supposed to stand for. Also, at the time American built cars had a
terrible reputation for reliability and workmanship as opposed to German-and especially-Japanese built vehicles. The
Rabbit’s mechanical and reliability issues certainly didn’t do it any favors either; the American built stigma was probably also an issue as well.
I agree with the comments about the plastic full wheel covers being particularly gross. Although for me at least that agreement comes courtesy of 65 year old me from the 21st century. 25 year old me in the 20th century thought that plastic wheel covers were just fine. I’m pretty sure that my 1984 Rabbit started out with the small chrome ones similar to Aaron’s lede photo, but before I was done with it, I absolutely had installed several sets of the big silver plastic ones. They did keep falling off and getting lost, so I perpetually had random ones hanging out with my off-season tires. I probably have at least one somewhere in the garage or basement even now.
Beyond that, I do think that the slamming of Pennsylvania-built VWs was largely a hissy-fit thrown by car magazines…and this may have been one of the things at the time that started me to begin feeling that a lot of what I was consuming in those magazines was (increasingly) a load of crap. I mean, picking on the car for being offered in baby blue (which I think is actually a rather nice color on a Rabbit) and not having black vinyl upholstery? Or, the horror of offering owners places to insert rear stereo speakers (because we all know that REAL MEN prefer to chop holes in the back parcel shelf with a serrated steak knife…well, that worked for this real man in previous cars….). As I said in a comment about PA Rabbits last week, I actually LIKED the blue velour in my Rabbit. I was also fine with carpet and a glove box with a big latch. Given my druthers, I might have preferred round headlights, but I’m not entirely sure that was simply a design choice on VW’s part. So, to each their own; and to heck with what a bunch of shills in a car magazine thought I should have been driving (or at least that’s how it felt to me at the time).
The green 1980 pictured in this article is sublime. 🙂
Yeah. Their dismay over the 1981 cars was a tad more understandable because those had been (from a car magazine standpoint) downgraded in a number of perceptible ways: The suspension was softer, and the four-speed cars had different gear ratios that sacrificed a lot of pep for better EPA numbers. However, they had made such a fuss over the ’79 cars’ cosmetic choices that it ends up sounding like the Boys Who Cried Wolf.
And you and Jeff Sun reminded me of another complaint from one of the buff books at the time: Stating that the side marker lights on the Westmoreland Rabbit looked like reflectors from a kid’s bicycle.
Oh yeah, George Kacher in CAR went particularly overboard about those, almost as much as the 5 mph bumpers and the different grille.
Baby blue was an offensive color? Maybe for those so called automotive critics who many times know less than they really know. Personally I like the color precisely because I like color. A color keyed interior? Fabulous, but maybe a darker carpet. Way better than black and gray interiors of today by a mile. Then not German enough since it isn’t built in Germany? Does anybody say not Japanese enough because the Camry wasn’t built in Japan?
Anyway, while I find the look of that Rabbit very attractive on first glance, which is how I judge car looks, I would have never bought one. In the back of my mind is the fact that it is German, like Audi but VW, and I knew from experience they couldn’t be trusted. So in 1980, when I had to buy my first actually brand new car, I went with the 1980 Honda Civic wagon. Yes, the wagon as I needed the peace of mind that there was something more behind my rear.
I helped my parents shop for a new car in the Fall of 1978 when they ended up buying a car just like this – a Rabbit C in light blue. I didn’t think anything of the color coordinated interior as our older car, a 1968 Checker, also was blue with a blue interior as was my grandfather’s 1961 Buick LeSabre. We didn’t find the build quality or reliability to be lacking, and it was a blast to drive. The biggest issue is that sometimes when stopping for a break on a long drive the fuel injection would vapor lock and the car wouldn’t start until it had cooled down for 20 minutes.
The car later became my daily driver until it was damaged running off the road in heavy snow. I replaced it with a 1977 Rabbit. Overall I preferred the 1979, although I never had the vapor lock issue with the 1977.
In the mid ’80s I drove a friend’s 1983 Rabbit, which felt cheesier than the ’70s ones.
To jump on the bandwagon (another phrase that probably begs elaboration) I struggle to see the problem here. Granted I was born in 1980, but looking at these cars through a historic lens I’m struggling to see (literally) what is so outlandishly garish about the Westmoreland cars. Yes they have color keyed interiors, but so did a whole slew of other cars from the time. It’s not like they had upholstery akin to Pontiac’s Valencia seats or the Navajo patterns offered on some Cutlasses.
The early Rabbits imported from Germany had austere cabins straight out of a gulag. I can’t imagine they were pleasant places to spend time commuting. Say what you will about the color keyed interiors, but they certainly go a long way towards sprucing the cabin up, and are completely in keeping with the jaunty cheerful vibe the Rabbit is associated with.
I may be guilty of looking at this dilemma from a modern lens, but I struggle to understand the appeal of the early Rabbits. Yes they may have been fun to drive, but the interiors were crude, and with low gearing highway cruising must have been painful. For my money I’d much rather have a later Rabbit LS with velour, Scirocco rims, decent carpet and sound insulation, along with the 4E transmission to make highway cruising tolerable.
“The early Rabbits imported from Germany had austere cabins straight out of a gulag.”
A wonderful insight, a wonderful sentence. The gulag called Wolfsburg.
VW had been manufacturing and assembling Beetles in Australia since the late fifties, but hit seriously-declining sales from about 1968 on. Soon after the Golf replaced the Beetle, it was all over for them here, and they reverted to being an importer.
It’s interesting to see some of the same comments popping up here as people were complaining of down under back in the day – poor assembly quality, massively-high price way out of line with the competition, and a general air of fragility – and that’s without the effect of the US models’ ‘Malibuization’.
Uncle Jack, a serial VW-owner, bought a German-made Golf 1.6 GLS. A truly lovely car, but you had to either be rich or a VW-tragic to buy one.
I think it’s a Euro/US thing.
US-owned companies gave us colour-coordinated interiors too and they were generally horrible.
My father had a Metallic blue Hunter with a depressing blue interior. It looked really cheap and decontented compared to its white with black predecessor.
I even detest the blue option inside NSXs to this day.
I always assumed that “jump the shark” was one of those incomprehensible and meaningless phrases that Americans feel compelled to say – like “Way to go.”
Had a Westmorland baby blue, piece of crap but easy to work on and since I was young and a moron I didn’t really notice how much time I had to spend fixing it. Car had a 5 gallon aux fuel tank in the spare tire well, which was great fun at the actual service stations that still existed back then.
A coworker had one of these blue on blue rabbits. I ended up with a Ford Fiesta. Price difference was huge. I also cross shopped the Civic, but dealer markup put them in Rabbit territory. The Fiesta handled very much like the German car it was, and reliable overall. Lost a few hp to the Rabbit because the 1600cc Kent had a 2bbl progressive Weber instead of FI. Only at very high altitude did I notice any lack of power. The one I got was somewhat color coordinated, gold exterior, tan cloth seats, but the rest was black.
And here I always thought the light pastel blue was nice .
I’ve owned two Rabbit rag tops, both 82’s , one a slushbox for my then girlfriend and the stick shift for me, both were fun to drive and reliable .
-Nate