I shot this Dasher (Passat) wagon over four years ago. It’s a classic Eugene pose: in the Whiteaker neighborhood, old VW being used to carry out one’s trade (tree pruner, I assume), and lots of Oregon Country Fair parking passes on the rear window. And it’s been there ever since, with the pruning ladder always on top. Until the other day…and so guess what replaced it, to carry the pruning ladder?
Of course…now an old Volvo 245 wagon would have worked just as well, but then finding one with almost all the exact same years’ of Fair parking passes might have been difficult. Maybe that’s what actually drove this purchase. Some mementos of life are hard to give up.
That must have taken some doing.
This guy was not thinking very far ahead – there is not nearly enough window space to park for many more years. As much as I would never even think of trying to keep an old Dasher on the road, I am sad that this intrepid soul has finally given up on it.
If I were the owner, and the Dasher was headed to the Great VolksJunkyard in the Sky, I would definitely remove that rear window and keep it as a memento.
Knowing Eugene, though, this Dasher will almost surely show up as a CC ten years from now in roughly the same condition.
Whay year is the old V-dub? Looks to be early 80’s and it was replaced with a 91-ish Toyo wagon. I’m guessing his next purchase will be an early 2000’s Legacy wagon. Just a prediction.
I wonder if both these vehicles were passed down from parent to child. When the parent upgrades their vehicle so does the child. They will perhaps receive a Subaru wagon in about a decade from now.
Maybe he used some goo gone on the old car and reapplied them on his new Tercel.
Screw those stickers. The side glass on the Veedub looks almost asymmetrical. If the wheelbase was a few inches longer those doors would almost interchange from side to side. Right front would fit left rear,etc.
Some good friends of ours have one of those Corolla AllTrac wagons so I should be careful, but that has to be one of the ugliest Japanese wagons ever sold despite strong competition from 1970’s Nissan products. The predecessor Tercel 4wd wagon was at least distinctive, and the standard late-’80’s early ’90’s Corolla wagon was clean-lined albeit generic, but this AllTrac body style was just bad.
From the pics of Oregon feature cars like the Dasher it looks like the bodies are about as rust free as for cars living outdoors in Calif. Paul since you lived in both places what have you noticed? I imagine underside rust is about the same since neither place uses salt on the roads but does being wet all the time accelerate rot anywhere other than the floors? Love those stickers!
Cars definitely rusted in coastal California in the ’70’s, presumably from salty fog or even ocean spray. I looked at a ’73 Vega for sale in ’76, in Pacifica on the coast just south of SF, that had perforation around the rear window, and the ’73 Vega I eventually bought showed rust in the same place a few years later. My 1975 Alfetta also had some suspension bracket rust-through within 3 years, and it had spent all its life in the Bay Area. Fiats with rusty rocker panels were also a common sight here. These days, I see a few surfer rigs with rusty roofs, presumably from dripping surfboards, but otherwise rust seems a thing of the past.
As dman said: if a car on the west coast lived very close to the coast, there’s susceptibility to rust from the salty air/fog. But in my experience, that means really close; one could see them in little coastal towns; I still do, actually. This car is a prefect example of an old beach-town car: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/uncategorized/curbside-classic-1965-chrysler-newport-two-old-grizzled-toughs/
Obviously, older cars are somewhat more prone to rust up here than in the dryer areas of California, mostly in areas where moisture gets trapped for long periods of time. Under the bottom edge of vinyl roofs, for example. And the cab
floor of my old truck is rusting away, from moisture trapped under the rubber floor mat.
But it’s all relative, since even a modest exposure to salty snow appears to be the most damaging factor, and we just don’t do salt out here, even when it does snow.
I’ll add a few data points to salt conversation here.
My extended family had a late 70s Ford Courier (Mazda B series clone) that lived in Sacramento for most of its life. Within 6 months of moving to Santa Rosa roughly 8 miles from the ocean all the scratches in the bed rusted up from the salt air.
Some of the Municipalities up here in Reno, Truckee & North Tahoe use salt on a limited basis for problem areas. Think a curve on an 8-10% downhill in a residential area with a stop sign at the bottom. Older Japanese cars usually show mild to moderate rust.
At my work the packer bodies on the older refuse apparatus starts to rust out around 15-20yrs. Areas that are sandblasted from the road sand and damaged from broken cross links on traction chains start to go first.
love the Toyota!