How many Diesel Rabbits have I caught over the years and shared them with you? Two dozen? At least. But there’s always more. And there will be more, undoubtedly.
On The Go Outtake: VW Diesel Rabbit – Still Hopping
– Posted on November 5, 2020
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Curbside Classics Archives
I had a VW diesel for 16 years. it looked like the GTI except for the red around the grill and the hatch wasn’t black. Half way through ownership it was caught in a flood, water up to the windows. My insurance company sent me off to get it repaired, but everything that was done had to be redone. By the time everything was fixed my agent said if he knew there was going to be that much work he would have totaled it on day one. It lasted until I got rear ended. It felt like a tap and didn’t appear damaged until the first rain came two weeks after. The interior filled up like a balloon ready to burst.
My car was built at the VW plant they opened in Pennsylvania. The workmanship left something to be desired but Oh that MPG was sensational/
I meant to say the interior headliner filled up like a balloon. The water got in through the top of the hatchback but it never leaked through the headliner.
Red light changed to green 3 minutes before this pic was taken when driver floored it. Slower acceleration than a Chevette with the A/C on. Pitch drop experiment moves quicker, but wow 50 mpg!
I had a ’86 diesel Golf. Yeah, it was slow but it wasn’t that bad. I had a bumper sticker on the back that said 0-60 in 15 minutes. A lot of people got a kick out of it at stoplights.
It went beyond workmanship. The electrical system in Westmoreland cars was very American, and very unlike the European-built cars. Lots of home-grown engineering in American-built VWs.
Brings back great memories! As a couple, my wife’s 1st new car was an ’84 Diesel Rabbit. In those days, the speed limit was still 55, and fuel was rather expensive, and it was nice to get 48-50 mpgs all day long. We put 230k on it before selling it to a buddy who put another 90k on it. Yes, a Westmoreland car, not great workmanship, but a rewarding little econobox!
The Westmoreland Rabbit was not as austere looking as the cheaper, earlier German Rabbits because of it’s “Malibuzation”, featuring the color-coordinated interiors, vs black with rubber floor mats on the cheaper German ones, which also came standard with….drum brakes.
Not only was the speed limit 55mph, but in from the late 70s thru the mid 1980s, the Rabbit shared the road with many, many, slow cars. Automatic Chevettes and Escorts, B-210s, 4-cylinder Fairmonts, and emasculated 6-cylinder and V8. It was considered quick for a diesel. Also, the suburbs then were not as spread out, fewer people commuted 30-60 miles each way with some interstate driving. On Long Island, where we lived, we were 10-15 minutes away from an expressway, and it was not often that I had the opportunity to go over 60mph.
In those days, especially for these early VW water-cooled cars, component and assembly quality was all over the map, as were constantly in the shop and a few were very reliable. My sense then was the diesels were more reliable, and much more consistently reliable (I was not aware of any unhappy diesel Rabbit owners, vs gas). Perhaps because diesel fuel injection required a higher standard of quality. The first carbureted Rabbits were plagued with drivability issues, which went away in 1977, when the Rabbit got fuel injection (in fact, a 1977 Rabbit is PEAK Rabbit–fuel injection AND the 1588cc motor, vs the 1471 cc in 1975, and the the FI 1457 cc starting in 1978).
My first car was a Westmoreland 86 Golf GTI, at a point in life where, coincidentally, I wound up working with two people who had 86-87 German Jettas. One was a lemon, the other had more warranty shop visits than mine. My Westmoreland car proved quite reliable over 145k miles, among the better cars I’ve owned. It was certainly a fun car, and overall, my favorite car.
In metro Detroit, I saw one in August during the Woodward Dream Cruise, but now that I think of it, they seem to have disappeared here…..
I’ve mentioned before that I had two Rabbits, one a first-year ’75 model and the second a Westmoreland, PA-built ’79 model. Both had the gas engine, carbureted in the first, fuel-injected in the second. Neither was a paragon of reliability.
These cars are now very seldom seen in central Virginia, but I did happen to catch this 1981-82 model in the local Walmart parking lot last March, just as the pandemic lockdowns began. From what I could deduce, this car started out as a gas model but was converted to diesel.
Here, rabbits are a pest and get poisoned, shot, and blown up (really).
A Rabbit diesel probably deserves a slightly kinder fate, but really, I never saw the appeal. They took all the Berliner vim and fizz of the petrol one and installed a large, humourless, wurst-chomping Bavarian. Instead of seeing off some V8-er who wasn’t concentrating at the lights, you’d be sitting there at the clunka-clunka idle with your teeth chipping at eachother, sweating as to whether or not a full-throttle charge would even get you across the intersection, (and the lazy V8-er was by then in the next State, btw).
But you didn’t want to sit at any lights anyway, mind, because the ungodly sooted storm you gifted otherwise to everyone behind you caught up and began to end your lungs.
And when they broke, which was more often than the petrol, no-one knew what to do, most mechanics mistaking the engine for that of a starter motor for a real one in a truck, which is where they said a diesel belongs.
Never, in the course of human history, have so few gains in mpg done so much wrong to so many good qualities.
A predictable Pavlovian response to a mention of a Diesel Rabbit.
No they weren’t slow. 0-50 in 10.7; 0-60 in 15.8. In 1977 that was quicker than a Fiat X1/9. And about the same as almost all small cars at the time. And many “big” American cars. And that was with the 48 hp 1.5. The 54 hp 1.6 that came along a couple of years later was even quicker.
And their reputation for being more reliable than the gas engine Rabbits is universally undisputed. Except by you, apparently.
Here’s the R&T review I posted last spring. Presumably you missed it:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/vintage-review/vintage-rt-review-and-24000-mile-long-term-test-1978-vw-rabbit-diesel-quicker-than-a-fiat-x1-9/
I’ve had several Rabbit Diesel cars of this generation and not one ever felt slow. The torque of the engine in the light car made it really peppy to drive in traffic. The manual rack and pinion steering was beautiful.
My dad’s 1986 Jetta Turbo Diesel went over 500,000 km before my mom sold it off.
I doubt you have ever driven one.
Here, in the same way as a rabbit is a pest, a Pavlovian response would mean turning up to a party with a large, passionfruit-topped meringue, so the world varies, you see. Here is not there, in fact, the vast majority of the planet is not there, something mostly overlooked from there.
Here, they were a (tariff-affected) expensive purchase, there were thus not too many of them. Add to that a (then) insular society where anything which was not a GM or Ford was exotic (and inherently suspect), add to that big distances and no people to service it outside of cities, and add, perhaps most of all, very low quality local distillate that actually prevented all but non-turbo Mercedes and Pug diesels coming here. This cumulates to result in a pricey car that did not run as well as it should, that belched large amounts of black smoke at all times, likely had its reliability compromised by the fuel and was hard to get fixed.
Here, then, the fact of its superior reliability is disputed.
My point, which I thought was clear – but understanding varies, like the world – is that the petrol one was a much nicer car to drive. Sure, the diesel might’ve been an ok performer in the time, but the petrol was (on leaded fuel here) something of a rocket, 30% faster. And it’s undisputed that a non-turbo diesel just does not have the throttle response of a petrol: the fuel burns too slowly. The car was not only slower, it felt it.
The zippy petrol ones were indeed rather crap for reliability, though here that was as much to do with their inherent flimsiness on bad roads as anything else. And they were simpler for most mechanics to fix.
As for canucklehead, you are entitled – perhaps in more than one sense of the word, I suspect – to your doubts, but in fact I have driven not one but two of these beasts. Ofcourse the handling was excellent for the time – the Golf was a delightful car – though the steering was heavy compared to the petrol. But the idle was crude and intrusive, the throttle response was as mentioned, and with no a/c and windows open, it literally stunk in traffic. And it was slow. My mate, who owned the second one I drove, was a fanatic, but like all such, was always justifying his decision by making excuses for all the clear deficiencies the car had compared to its petrol brother.
Maybe less with the hopping and more with the writing a grant proposal about conducting research to determine the feasibility of thinking about possibly arranging to consider discussing the design of a pilot study into the realistic possibilities of gathering a small amount of momentum.
They were even slower (0 to 50 perhaps the second half of next week) and smellier up at 5,500 feet, visibly worsening Denver’s notorious Brown Cloud.
Another Pavlovian response to a mention of a Diesel Rabbit.
No they weren’t slow. 0-50 in 10.7; 0-60 in 15.8. In 1977 that was quicker than a Fiat X1/9. And about the same as almost all small cars at the time. And many “big” American cars. And that was with the 48 hp 1.5. The 54 hp 1.6 that came along a couple of years later was even quicker.
Here’s the R&T review I posted last spring. Presumably you missed it:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/vintage-review/vintage-rt-review-and-24000-mile-long-term-test-1978-vw-rabbit-diesel-quicker-than-a-fiat-x1-9/
Alright, Paul, I did miss your R&T post. But still, 5,500 feet elevation means a loss of about 16 to 17 percent, so the 54hp engine becomes a 45hp item. And the two I had experience with were not very well looked-after, so probably down on power from that, as well.
I don’t imagine you think I’m wrong about the exhaust smoke, though! 🙂
Gasoline engines would have had a corresponding power loss too.
No, they tend to smoke more at higher elevations at full throttle.
Daniel, how often do you drive at 5500 ft?
That was the elevation in suburban Denver where I lived for 23 years, and I drove most days.
And what’s more, from time to time I drove upward from there, into the mountains.
I worked for the Cummins distributor from 1979 to 1981. Two of the field representatives had these in Diesel power. What impressed me most was the interior leg room because on of the men with whom I would travel occasionally, a man named Bob, was 6′ 8″ tall, There was plenty of room for this behemoth of a man who also had some heft to him. The other gent was a man named Eddie. He and I are short guys. These cars were comfortable for all day driving. We were not trying to beat out traffic, so acceleration was not an issue. Gm “Dieselized” two of their V8’s and both were disasters because they could not withstand the pressures and heat of a Diesel when they were merely gasoline engines.
While I wouldn’t want to climb up the Rockies to the Eisenhower Tunnel (elevation 11,158 feet) in one fully loaded with three passengers and luggage, the trip downhill would be fun.
I nearly traded my ’83 Subaru for a Malibuized ’81 Rabbit diesel in ’90. It would have been an even swap. I still wish I’d done it as I liked the handling of the Rabbit way more than my Subie.