In the market for a CC, but looking something a bit different than that low-mileage 1990 Mark VII LSC we featured the other day? How about the polar opposite? This 1980 Dasher is old, has a 54 hp diesel, has over 250k miles, gets 35-40 mpg, has four doors, and is sitting in front of a very Eugenian garden gate. And it even has an asking price: $1600. Tempted? Or want to run away as fast as you can?
Have we done a Dashher/Passat CC over here yet? Umm….no. But I have a better one than this to use, if that’s possible. Yes, the other one has the earlier front end style, not this facelifted version. For that matter, this 1980 is the last year for the Passat Mk1, and they’re hardly common anymore.
It even has the more powerful 1.6L engine from a 1985 Jetta (rebuilt 15k miles ago). I’ve been a bit tongue-in-cheek here, but these engines have a rep for being mighty tough. I’m assuming the original engine went for about 225k.
If it had the turbo engine (70hp) it would really be compelling. All diesels really wake up with a bit of boost, and the difference in the VWs was pretty dramatic: it actually had a little mini-surge of power when the boost came on, unlike the normally aspirated one. And it felt and sounded better too, as the turbo smoothed out its exhaust pulses.
The interiors in the cars were high quality for the times. Excellent materials, and well put together. Actually, when these came out in the early seventies, as the Audi Fox (80) or Dasher/Passat, they were in a class to their own; a very stark contrast to the Broughams that dominated the streets then. They literally defined the modern lightweight-but-roomy fwd car, particularly so in the US, where there was a profound vacuum of such things then. A genuine milestone car; what are you waiting for?
That Dasher might have its virtues – but i haven’t seen anything look more like a rolling baked potato since my parent’s 83 Nissan Stanza, which looked exactly like this car:
Yes, there were lots of look-alikes after the Dasher came out.
…and even one or two before it came out 😉
I had a ’75 Audi Fox (80) 2 door sedan, that I swapped in a ’83 Rabbit GTI 1.8L, for a brief time in the mid-ninties. Despite its quirks, I loved that car, went like a raped ape, and had a healthy appetite for CV joints (MIGHT be part my fault!) Same color as this Dasher. Good times…ended up trading the engine for a ’71 Maverick
I once drove a 70s-vintage Audi Fox about 1984 or so. The owner was a fellow student who had just been through a divorce (from a guy who worked at a VW-Audi dealer), and she was experiencing some problems and wondered if she should keep it or ditch it. She let me drive it, and I came to understand why those were so popular. The thing was sheer delight at high speed and handled much better than anything I was used to. However, as we all know, those charms come at a pretty steep cost.
I know that my sister has had several VW diesels over the years and keeps going back for more whenever they make it back to the US after periodic vacations from this market. However, her current ride is a rare Jeep Liberty diesel.
I had two family members who had Dashers in the late ’70s/early 80s. Both spoke of them in very negative terms- worst car they ever owned and so on. They listed problems from the front to the back, mainly with the electrics, fuel system and drivetrain, but as the years passed, the defects and stories increased in magnitude, to keep the listener’s interest of course.
That said, I don’t know why they were particularly bad cars. I had an ’83 Mk1 Jetta that wasn’t bad- and that was a 12 year old car at the time. I do agree that VW led the way in developing a comfortable seat in a small car. Volvo and Saab had done it before, but both had the luxury of building to a standard rather than a price. My Jetta, while not cheap in ’83, had an interior far above the Civic, Corolla, and miles ahead of anything coming out of Detroit- and it was in that same brown/tan as the Dasher. The plastics were this very good quality foam/vinyl which felt very nice and very 80s to touch.
Regardless, the Dasher was still engineering wise a bitofa bitza. Audi and NSU engineers were competing with each other during its development, with some parts and assemblies being done either the ‘NSU’ way or the Audi way. I think this is what made them such pigs to work on. Further, VW was so spoiled that the Beetle engine could be removed quickly, that they never really thought about making the cars repairable with the engine in situ. All Haynes manuals for VW’s from the type 3 onwards, have step five in every job being: Please see chapter 1 for engine removal procedure.
Combining that with the legendary indifference of many VW dealerships in the late 70s (at least where I grew up) and you have a recipe for a lemon. I think these were still made of the poor European steel of the 70s, so they, like the Sciroccos, rotted horribly as well.
While not as out there as the 100LS or K70, you could still see that it was the ‘bridge’ between first generation FWD cars and those we know today.
The internet has exposed me to people that claim to have had good experiences owning just about anything, but I knew quite a few unhappy Dasher, Fox, and diesel Rabbit owners back when they were current. Lots of interior pieces fell off or came off in use. Electrical wiring was frail. Water leaked into the interiors and fluids leaked onto the ground. Heater cores burst in cars that were four years old. Clutches were not durable. Still, most cars of the era were struggling with the regulatory hurdles thrown in their way. Bad driveability and starting issues were just about a given. Dieseling was failure for the engine to stop when requested.
It was a tough time for automakers in general, and VW buyers expected the dependability that their air cooled cars had delivered. Unfortunately, the Dasher was basically an Audi 80, and Audi already had a horrible reputation, established by the 100 LS before the government could take much of the credit. Throw in the early diesel engines and things got really ugly. In both my neighborhood in Charlottesville, VA and my grandparents’ in Williamstown Mass, there were diesel Rabbits sitting in driveways in the early ’80s. They were cars that had died before they were paid off, usually parked when their second engines failed. Oldsmobile stole the headlines, but pretty much anyone that deviated from inline-injection pumps on their diesels at the time was building throw-away cars.
@CJinSD I know what you mean – my godfather had a 1977 Dasher (gasoline) that suffered from all of the maladies you listed. My most vivid memories of the car were when we had to drive it in the rain, which was not often, because it would leak like crazy from the windshield.
VW/Audi buyers’ experience with their Dashers and Foxes, I think, mirrored those of Volvo buyers when the 850 first came out in 1993 – do you remember that model’s introduction? Those customers expected the dependability and durability that their 240s and 740s delivered – but unfortunately the first 850s were plagued with transmission failures, electrical problems, delaminating trim pieces, and a/c issues, which the RWD Volvos rarely suffered from.
A friend drove a Rabbit diesel from this era. Even in the smaller car, the diesel engine worked very hard to provide barely noticeable acceleration.
Those VW diesels were anything but idle at idle. I can still see in my mind’s eye the way the front fender-mounted whip antenna oscillated wildly while the car sat with the engine running.
A friend owned a diesel VW pickup. I drove it a couple of times. Sitting at a stoplight the whole dash was a blur. Not only was the thing slow, it was painful.
When they do that, they need motor mounts. Like everything else Rabbit, an easy job.
My sister’s 81 Rabbit diesel did the same thing. The cheap plastic dash and pad would visibly vibrate. Strangest thing I ever saw.
I was so stuck in the American-car idiom when these were new that they made no sense to me. You mean I’m buying a small car for that kind of money? Good god, why?
Then I spent a summer in Germany in ’84 riding around in cars like this, and it started to dawn on me.
Time has warmed me up to their concept. Not this car’s styling, though. All the grace of a school bus.
My family lived in the Netherlands in 1984. We rented an Opel Ascona 1.6S, the German equivalent of a Cavalier. They’re all gone now, near as I can tell, but they were so much nicer to drive and ride in than the US market equivalents as to defy belief. They had the benefit of no emissions controls or bumpers to slow them down and ruin their efficiency, but they were also more restrained in their styling and appointments. We cruised at 130 kph all over Germany. 81 mph might not seem like much now, but it wasn’t a speed at which an early ’80s US econobox would cruise with complete composure. Upon our return to the US, we were issued a white FWD Sedan DeVille with fake wire wheels, white-wall tires, red velvet seats with splitting stitching, and 37 miles on the odometer. It was a bitter pill to swallow that this was how GM saw the American public.
I don’t know why it is, but photos of old VW interiors elicit a “smell” response in me that doesn’t exist when I look at any other interior photos. I know EXACTLY what that car smells like…and while it’s not great, it’s not without its charm. I think I knew too many girls in high school who drove diesel Volkswagens…
Maybe these cars improved over the course of their production run, but my 1975 Dasher pillaged my bank account like an angry Visigoth. I just could not keep the sumbitch running. Oh, but when it ran, its little 1471cc four would sing like a Wagnerian tenor in the upper rev ranges, especially when the crankcase was full of Arco Graphite. (Yes, I really used that stuff.) I loved the cars handling and outward vision and overall brio, but its unreliability put me off Volkswagen forever.
I had a ’74 Dasher, and I echo your sentiments entirely. Too lightly built, and always in need of something, but generally speaking, the major systems were okay, and I LOVED driving it. It was owning it that I didn’t like. Rust was not too bad for a car of that period, but I lived in Ithaca, NY from ’78-’81, where more salt is always preferable to the plow. In the summer of ’81 it succumbed.
The other big weakness of the early gas powered cars was the soft valve guides on the engine. It always used more oil than I would like, but by 100k, it needed a quart twice a week – about a quart in 200 miles! One day, the remote hood release stretched to the point of not being able to open the latch, and I sold the car before the engine could run out of oil.
I’ll definitely take that garden gate. That’s what I love about Curbside Classic–it also fulfills my interest in unusual architecture and home remodeling!
It looks like the BMW designers were also inspired by the lowly Dasher/Passat based on pictures of the upcoming 3-Series GT 5 door.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/12/bmw-3-series-gt-the-latest-in-a-series-of-pointless-variants/
Is that a block of wood wedged under the parking brake lever to hold it up? And those seat covers – so gross! I can only imagine how much the dash in that thing rattles. Also, the unkempt cosmetics make this thing feel pretty used up and leave me wondering how neglected the suspension/brakes/etc. are. $1,600 seems awfully high for this sort of condition, but then the diesel used market is crazy.
And maybe these things are so basic that there is less that needs to be fixed in the first place.
Love the stubby shifters these had – reminds me of my old VW Fox wagon, or of the Miata shifters. I wish all manuals had these.
Can’t imagine why they’d do an engine swap and not go with the mid-80s turbo 1.6 diesel. And if it were me, I’d also be inclined to go with the ABA 2.0L gasser -cheap and plentiful, and the fuel economy hit is probably minor, if the current set-up is only returning 35-40. And 115hp, even if modest, would be tons of fun in a 2000 lb Dasher. I imagine you’d be able to surprise more than a few cars off the stoplight.
My general Dasher experience appears below but I have to admit the stubby shift lever was cool.
– Chris
Terrifying. Also, $1600 is more than you could have gotten for it in trade 30 years ago.
This, with the original diesel, is a car that it would be almost impossible to get a speeding ticket in, I have an old C&D with a road test of one, I think the top speed was 78mph.
Overall, this and most of the other piles VW pimped over here is the 70’s and 80’s were pure garbage.
“Overall, this and most of the other piles VW pimped over here is the 70′s and 80′s were pure garbage.”
Perhaps, but only if your frame of reference was defined by Hondas. Even then, the VWs had nice seats and the fuel injected gasoline ones had nice throttle response. If your frame of reference was the American cars of the era, German built Jettas and Sciroccos were practically magical. As reliable as the best domestics, but with better everything else. They were cheap Mercedes, back when that was a good thing. Looking back through Honda owning eyes at my 1985 Jetta GL 5-speed, it was pretty pathetic from a reliability stand point. I didn’t know that back then though, because I’d grown up with domestics.
If you look at a 1984 Opel Ascona, a 1985 Jetta, and a 1985 Cavalier, the first two will seem to have more in common. The materials, engine, and style of the Ascona were all judged to be too good for US value customers by GM. Defending GM is like a battered wife defending her husband.
I think my Volvo 740 with its non-turbo 114-hp engine could blow the doors off this Dasher diesel by a wide margin.
I bought an ’81 Dasher diesel wagon in ’85. I was so enthralled with the fuel mileage concept I totally missed the motor oil floating in the coolant reservoir till the next day. So I started ownership with the installation of a new cylinder head.
42 mpg day in, day out. Appalling NVH compared to our gasoline Rabbit (though my car pool mate’s gas Fox was almost as bad). Fuse panel issues related to the cooling fan. Acceleration almost non-existent with the A/C on.
Finally the transaxle started popping out of gear and I’d had enough.
I’ve owned better.
A guy I know built a 85 golf two door hatch from a bare shell to better than new spec. he rebuilt the 1.6 non turbo oil burner in the same fashion but with a turned up injection pumpand a five speed trans. He also added gti rear disk brakes and 14 inch wheels this car was the most fun id ever had in a diesel volkswagon. I think the timed injection pump and larger injectors really wake up these old things probably to the tune of eighty horsepower, not much but better than 54hp stock.Yeah my piont was these vw diesels can be awakened with a little know how and patience.
Believe it or not, this ancient Passat is still being produced in droves in China. Shanghai-VW churns them out for taxi duty. They are cheap, proven designs perfect for the lower tech Chinese environment. They are all 1.8 litre VW inline SOHC with manual transmission. There are millions of them on the roads and there are no plans to replace them.
On another topic, the first time I came across a good running Dasher I was amazed at how well the car drove. It was peppy, cheap to run had loads of room. Problem was anyt time I had anything to do with one it constantly had something wrong with it. The electrics were much more complex than normal VW stuff and hard to diagnose, it must have been Auto Union stuff because none of it made much sense or even worked half the time. The auto trans was weak. Steering racks leaked like sieves. Bad water leaks. The only thing that was not totally bad about these cars were the diesel engines. The toughest small motors in history, capable of amazing levels of abuse. I love the 1.6 diesel, in a light Rabbit, ie one with no options, they scooted along just fine and got outstanding fuel economy.
Called VW Santana there,
Actually, it’s the second generation, the Santana. Called Quantum here.
Back in the late eighties, my parents owned one of these as well – in the exact same color and probably the same year, but as a wagon and with a gas engine. It was bought used to replace a 1982ish Audi 80 that had been totaled (a drunk driver had managed to run into it while it was parked on the side of the road). I didn’t particularly like either car’s styling – much too bland for a teenager’s tastes -, but both did provide reliable transportation during the short time my parents owned them (about a year for the Passat, less for the Audi). Judging from the comments above, that may have been lucky.
I also remember the salvaged engine from the totaled Audi as a permanent fixture in my parents’ basement for years afterwards – never know when one of those might come in handy again…
Let’ s do justice the earlier VW Dasher was an attractive car . But if we speak strictly about design ideas, the true “father” of the 1st generation Passat rebadged Dasher for the US was the mostly unknown in América venerable Lancia Beta Berlina released in Europe 1971 or so, an elegant 4doors fastback that seems to be liftback but it’s an odd sedan with a little gate for the trunk’s access..