Here’s the final installment of Road and Track’s long term test of a first year 1975 Rabbit. The plan was to test it only to 24,000 miles, but since the car required extensive upgrading to 1976 specs (by VW) and than suffered a major failure (broken crankshaft) along with numerous more minor maladies, the test was taken all the way to 48,000 miles.
And it shows just why VW lost its grip on the US market to the Japanese.
The first chapter of this saga (24,000 miles) is here; The second chapter (36,000 miles) is here.
The combination of poor quality/reliability along with a very unfavorable exchange ratio was a body blow to VW, which watched its market share shrivel away. Well, that had already started a few years earlier, when it was still trying to sell a desperately obsolete Beetle and other rear-engined cars like the 411/412. Meanwhile, Honda couldn’t make Civics and Accords fast enough.
And VW is still trying to play catch-up in the US market, where it has been losing some $600-700 million per year, the one big black hole in its huge global success. And so far, success has been rather modest.
Volkswagen does it…
…
…again!
Beat me to it !!
I remember as a kid my friends parents drove VW they got a new rabbit. It was no nicer than a beetle to ride in. If anything it was worse. It had a nauseating odor unlike a normal new car that made you feel like throwing up. The fecal brown didn’t help. It was also always in the shop.
I spent some back-seat time in a Rabbit Diesel L. I don’t know what the hierarchy was of the various trim levels (L, C, etc) but I do recall this one felt like it would do 0-60 in “possibly sometime later this week” and visibly contributed to Denver’s notorious brown cloud.
L for Luxe, which meant that the steering wheel and the seats were standard items for the trim level. (optional for C, IIRC)
Had a 1976 Electric Green Scirocco which I loved. Exhaust system fell off twice a year and needed tune-up every 10k. Rusted out at 6 years old but still want it back.
And the Rabbit was also without the famous “Volkswagon Aroma” that anyone who has ever driven or ridden in a Beetle or other air-cooled VW will not forget. Seems everything VW has made since 1975 (except for Diesel Rabbits) has been nothing but junk. It wasn’t just former owners of Detroit Iron who found a sweet spot with Japanese cars – and stayed with them.
In the present day, Volkswagen’s blatant and arrogant Diesel Dishonesty has not helped them, either. Indeed, the price they have paid might really not have been enough, given the enormity of their transgression and the ouright, deliberate gall with which they did it.
It certainly doesn’t seem to have hurt them any. It did, however, expose big loopholes and shortcomings in the European new vehicle type-approval testing system.
It would have been nice if R&T had broken down the price list. From what I can gather, MSRP for a base (and I do mean base) 2-door Rabbit was $3,330. I would imagine the add-on dealer A/C was pricey, and it was probably the premium trim level, as well as adding in CA tax and dealer prep, but $4,729? That’s only $243 under the MSRP of the hit of 1975, the Chrysler Cordoba.
Rudiger,
Take a look at the first page of the R/T 24,000 mile test that Paul has linked to above (here it is again) https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/vintage-reviews/vintage-r-extended-24000-miles-use-report-1975-vw-rabbit-issues-and-more-to-come/
The article does break down the price. I’d cut and paste it for you but since the magazine page is shown as a jpeg file, I can’t.
’75/’76 Rabbits were bad, no way around it. And California models were even worse, with the required catalytic converters quickly being destroyed by the junk Zenith carburetors these cars were cursed with. The crank pulley failure, with the way the keyway is battered likely is the result of the AC install and a improperly tightened crank pulley bolt. I can only recall a couple of cars that had pulley failures, once the nose of a crank broke off, the others were damaged like this car was because of improperly torqued crank bolt. The early dealer AC add on kits were not well engineered, the mounting brackets for the heavy York compressor were another problem point, they would often crack in service.
I bought a used ’75 Rabbit with add on AC (VPC, made in Texas) around 1980, the AC worked but the compressor bracket was cracked. I replaced the compressor mounting bracket with a factory AC bracket for a 1977 Rabbit that was properly designed, it bolted in without modification. I replaced the junk Zenith with an aftermarket Pinto type Holly/Weber conversion and removed the troublesome AIR pump system as well. After all these mods, the car ran well. But it was no longer smog legal.
1977 and the introduction of CIS fuel injection was what the car should have been from day one. They did have valve seals that were not durable, but VW issued a recall regardless of mileage that replaced these seals with updated parts that were durable at no charge.
” I can only recall a couple of cars that had pulley failures, ”
The very first Mazda Miata did this.
I purchased a 1978 Rabbit as a new car in the early spring of 1978. By this time the factory A/C was properly integrated into the dash. About a year into my ownership the engine began smoking badly; this was due to bad valve seals which VW replaced for free. I drove my Rabbit for seven years and put well over 100k miles on the car. Other than normal wear items the only thing I replaced was the master cylinder for the brakes. When I traded the car away in 1985 it still had the same clutch which engaged with no slipping or chattering. The Rabbit never saw the inside of a garage during my ownership so after seven years the paint was starting to fade, some of the interior trim was also pretty worn and there was some minor rust, around the radio antenna and on the grill at the base of the windshield. I know that VW’s in general (and especially Rabbits) have a poor reputation, here and elsewhere. Fortunately the one I had was reliable, economical to operate and generally entertaining to drive.
By 1978, most of the issues that plagued the first year or two of production had been mostly fixed. The Rabbit was fundamentally a sound car, but it had a number of birthing issues, pretty severe ones in 1975. They were mostly related to US cars, with emission systems and things like that poorly-engineered add-on AC system.
’77 and ’78 were the best Rabbits you could get, then in ’79 the Westmoreland cars came out with the poor assembly quality and cheesy malibu interior’s the early cars were plagued with. 1979 Diesels were still German built due to slow startup of the US plant, so they got an extra years reprieve.
I worked at a VW dealership back then, I should have made it more clear I was talking about few water cooled VW’s ( Rabbit, Scirocco, Dasher) having pulley failures.
67Conti,
Do you remember the original 1st-generation Audi 100 LS and Audi Fox that were offered in the U.S. during the ’70s? I’ve heard very few good things about those cars, the 100 especially.
The Audi 100 was pretty much a reliability disaster. Especially so in the US, as these were all-new to the mechanics who were supposed to fix them. It was a bad start for Audi.
The Fox, which was all-new and not related to the 100, (and was the twin of the Passat) had some issues, but not as severe as the 100. many of them also had to do with its carb, FI, and peripherals, not the fundamental car itself.
Like all of these FWD VW/Audi cars, they got better each year. The first couple of years were the most trouble-some. But the later ones gave good service to many owners.
The Audi 100 was pretty much a reliability disaster. Especially so in the US, as these were all-new to the mechanics who were supposed to fix them. It was a bad start for Audi.
I presume in Europe, Audi was sold by the existing DKW dealers? They would have had some familiarity with the F102/103 platform and the 103’s powertrain. Here, Audi seemed to have usually been dualed with Porsche. You would think the Porsche mechanics would at least make an attempt to properly service the car, but there is no substitute for experience. That being said, I heard Audi 100LS horror stories about the cars breaking down on the first trip home from the dealer.
from the library at casa del Steve.
Agree with Paul’s assessment of the 100 LS and Fox/Dasher.
The first gen Rabbit may have initially failed to carry the reliability reputation of the Beetle, but what an icon of the 70s they became.
Here’s another Thames TV review of the brand new Golf in 1974.
If it were made in Britain, would they have tested it in the middle of nowhere with streaks of mud and sheep poo splashed up the side of it? They really should’ve thought twice about bringing up the Allegro in comparison to the Golf, though.
Backup lights not required in the UK in 1974?
Lol, they considered its main competitor the Austin Allegro… maybe the only car that was less reliable than a ’74 Golf
That CIS fuel injection system introduced in ’77 was nothing but a headache. I should know, I had a 1987 German-built Jetta Carat and it was nothing but trouble. Wanted to love that car, so nice to drive when working well, space efficient, huge trunk and fun to drive even with the automatic – but excessively complicated mechanicals and expensive to repair. Couple that with dealer service that was both arrogant and dishonest and you have a recipe for turning away a customer FOREVER!
As sketchy as early liquid cooled VW reliability may have been, and as near to leaving the US as VW came in the early 90s, they survived when every other mass market European brand left. Attribute that to German stubbornness, or being better than Renault, Fiat and Peugeot. As a book about AMC I read recently put it, European expectations of reliability at that time were different from US expectations.
It’s not like the streets of the US were paved with gold for every Asian automaker either, what with Daihatsu, Daewoo, Isuzu and Suzuki all departing and Mitsu being shrunk to a shadow of it’s former presence. There was a time when mighty Toyota was given a bloody nose, withdrew and regrouped.
here was a time when mighty Toyota was given a bloody nose, withdrew and regrouped.
When was that?
Surely you don’t mean back in 1959 or so. Toyota wasn’t exactly mighty back then. They misread the market, but the car wasn’t badly built.
Surely you don’t mean back in 1959 or so. Toyota wasn’t exactly mighty back then. They misread the market, but the car wasn’t badly built.
Yes, the Toyopet is what I was referring to. Well built or not, it was not suitable for the US market.
One comment I did glean about the Alliance from the styling guys was that Renault designed it’s cars for French weather conditions, the cooling and HVAC systems were inadequate for the extremes encountered in the US, and Renault would not upgrade the systems.
On 60s Japanese build quality, a college classmate of mine spent his summers working in the service department of a Honda bike dealer. He commented about the poor build quality of Honda bikes, with nasty, runny welds and bits of welding rod left on the frame and painted over.
It seems that Toyota and Honda learned very quickly from their initial mistakes…And the rest was history as they ended up building plenty of vehicles very suitable for the US market. Contrast that with surprise in Detroit and Washington that the Americans can’t seem to sell their vehicles in Japan. Apparently (obviously to anyone with half a brain) they are not suitable for the Japanese market but plenty of folks seem to think there are other, more nefarious, forces at play.
My dad had one of the first Honda bikes in the US from the late 50s, he said the quality and reliability was poor compared to the Triumph he bought after.
I was sitting in traffic recently ( in Cork city) behind a shiny Mk 1 Golf/Rabbit, staring in dis-belief at the 2009 registration plate. Naturally I googled it when I got home, and the original Golf, in modified form, was manufactured until mid-2009 in South Africa.
They still built the Mk II Jetta and the Santana until fairly recently in China as well. I never quite understood why they didn’t update the cars in those markets, even if they did keep them a generation behind. I don’t think the Jetta III lived on anywhere at all, but I do seem to recall that the IV model had an extended run in some markets, and is the last one that I really liked as having that intangible VW ness about it that I felt strangely showed up in the Mk I Chevrolet Cruze. I would’ve bought one of those had the Elantra not been $3,000 (which was about 20% at the trim I was shopping) cheaper.
The last of these 80s models in China had the styling of the front and rear clips revised several times to look more like current VW models, and they really look strange. They lose the “Little Orphan Annie” blocky headlights and a lot of the stern, German purposeful looks, too. I wouldn’t necessarily call it an improvement, though.
The Mk4 Jetta and Golf were both sold in Canada alongside the Mk5
Canadian market MkIV based Golf City, that somehow leaked across the border to metro Detroit.
Yes! I received one as a rental on a trip to Cape Town in 2006 or so and was dumbfounded! Drove it up the Western Cape 100km or so and I don’t recall it being that bad at all. Still seemed odd to be driving a brand new 30+ year old car. 🤔😊
This test is in stark contrast to those who suggest that Westmoreland was the Rabbit’s downfall. VW was deep in uncharted territory for them when it came to water cooled FWD cars. People liked their FWD VWs, but it sounds a lot like the ownership experience of a Citation.
Again I am struck by the difference in reputation between a given model in the EU and the USA. Here in Austria those had a solid reputation as a fairly reliable, dependent car and in fact contributed greatly to making VW Golf in all its iterations as the top selling car for the last 30 years (if anything, it’s the LATER models which have tarnished the brand somewhat). Yes they had their weak spots – the Zenith Pierburg carb was crap but a simple conversion kit by Weber solved that. The Bosch injection – if maintained – remained in tune for thousands and thousands of miles. They did rust but so did everything else back then – certainly they were nowhere as bad as French, Italian or those MECHANICALLY reliable Japanese cars. I still regularly encounter MkII Golfs (mechanically not very different from the MkI) being used as everyday transport – lots of luck trying to find a Toyota of that age here, those rusted to the ground 20 years ago.
So there.
I’ve owned my mk2 Jetta since ’91 (86 model) and it still serves me well today, at over 300k miles. Gas engine, 5 speed trans, steering rack and PS pump are all still original and in good working order, uses about 1/2 quart oil in 3k miles. Repairs have been few and far between over the years. I do most repairs myself, so that avoids the problem of a poor quality technician screwing things up. As others have noted, all the manufacturers in the ’70’s were struggling with US (and especially California) emission controls, and VW was no exception.
So there😉.
Again I am struck by the difference in reputation between a given model in the EU and the USA.
That divergence in reliability expectations goes back quite a while. The early 70s Audi 100LS was enormously successful in Europe, but it was a reliability disaster in the US, in spite of generally being sold and maintained by Porsche dealers.
My ex-AMC contacts are all in styling. I would love to pick François Castaing’s brain about how the Alliance went so wrong, given that 72% of the parts content was from the US, rather than France. The thought in the back of my mind was that Renault handed the parts drawings to AMC, and AMC handed the prints to their vendors saying “build this, and make it cheap”, with no testing done before starting production.
VW did seem to get it’s arms around it’s reliability issues as the vilified Westmoreland Rabbits, as well as most other liquid cooled VWs, worked their way up to “average” in the 80s.
With most Porsches being relatively low mileage vehicles and the marque not having anything water cooled until 1976 in the US as well as nothing FWD, it’s hardly surprising that a Porsche tech may not be the ideal choice for an Audi in the early to mid ’70’s. It actually probably helped the other way eventually since the 924 used an engine first introduced in the Audi 100, even through it was a VW design.
40+ years have changed our memories. The Rabbit (Golf to the rest of you) was a bit of a revolutionary car from a company as hidebound as VW. Granted, Mini and even Honda had already plowed this field, but VW had reach in places those companies didn’t. VW was a trusted brand; Honda, Toyota not so much. Not that they were seen as bad, just unknown.
Honestly, little was very good in the smog-era 1970’s, if they didn’t rust to pieces the emissions controls screwed everything up. Kind of like the head gasket issues in the 80’s-90’s; stuff that was working fine for decades now was problematic. You’d have to experience it back then to appreciate what we have now. I can go out to my 10 year old Pontiac in subfreezing weather and it will run right, and drive well once I’m out of the driveway. Trying that with a 10 year old car in 1978? Good luck, buddy.
VW, GM, Chrysler and others here in the US stumbled during the transition to emissions controls and FWD. It’s not like there weren’t other car companies that had a hard time, too. That would include our favorite Japanese brands…
That would include our favorite Japanese brands…
Which ones, exactly? What hard times did they have?
Take your pick. Maybe you didn’t witness the rust issues, the emissions/drivability issues, et al, but they occurred. Just as in other markets (and other products) there are the two that have done the best, but it’s not like they were without their issues throughout time.
VW handed the import car market to the Japanese? Maybe in the 70’s. But, where are Isuzu and Suzuki in the US market? Please don’t tell me they were harmed by their association with GM, GM sold more Suzukis and Isuzus than the companies could by themselves. What about Mitsubishi? Allied with Renault and Nissan in an uncomfortable menage a trois? Mazda and Honda are the independents, with Honda in better shape. I see Mazda sputtering after the deal with Ford was ended. (So is Ford…) Subaru is in Toyota’s orbit and I wonder how long they will remain independent.
Even after a near-death experience in North America, VW is still here and the company is one of the biggest on the planet. As an aside, I wonder where these negotiations between Ford and VW are going. I suspect that they will eventually source vehicles from each other. No matter what happens, I believe VW will come out on top and stronger than ever before.
I’m not a huge fan of VW, actually. But, one has to respect their tenacity. Japanese brands are either retreating or consolidating. I have a feeling VW will keep rolling right along, in North America and the rest of the world.
When you said “hard times”, it was in the context of emission controls and the switch to FWD. I was specifically addressing that. None of the Japanese cars had any substantial issues with the switch to FWD; care to point one out to me? And sure, driveability issues affected a wide range of cars in the 70s, although Honda with its CVCC engine almost totally escaped that.
We could go on and on, but the simple undeniable undebatable reality is that the batting average of the Japanese in terms of quality and reliability was better than the Big 3 and the Europeans, which rather explains why they have a total stranglehold on the market except for trucks/big SUVs, right? This didn’t happen by accident; and it’s history. To debate this now is frankly absurd.
As to the disappearance of the smaller Japanese brands, it wasn’t for lack of the typical Japanese car qualities. The market all over the world has been consolidating, and smaller brands are either sucked up by bigger ones, or croak. The US market, because of its huge size and expensive advertising/marketing costs absolutely demands a huge scale (or very high margins on premium cars) in order to survive. As the market shifted more and more away from little cars to bigger ones to trucks and SUVs, companies like Daihatsu and Suzuki were destined to fail. And both of these companies had a rep for exceptionally well-built products.
Mitsubishi has obviously struggled also in the changing market, because incentives and cost-cutting by Toyota, Honda and Nissan made it very difficult. FWIW, they are doing a fair bit better now.
Moving on to VW. Of course they’re going to be around; they’re a colossus. As in the world’s biggest car company. But their history in the US, the potentially most profitable one in the world, has been frankly miserable. After their golden air-cooled years, it has been a very rough ride for them here. The dollar devaluation, the rise of more reliable Japanese brands, and their quality issues with their new FWD cars reamed them in the 70s. And they have never properly recovered.
VW has perpetually lost money in the US since the 70s. They almost pulled out of the US market, in the early 90s, IIRC. Currently they are losing $600-700 million every year here. It’s the one big financial hole in their global business.
They are obviously very committed, as they have to be. And they’re spending billions in a makeover here, with US-specific products, like the US Passat, which has frankly been a bust, given the collapse of the sedan market. Now it’s the Atlas and 3-row Tiguan.
I’m not anti or pro VW when I say this. I’m just pointing out the facts. VW was arrogant for decades in assuming they understood the American market. They didn’t. The big Japanese did. And the results speak for themselves.
VW still lacks the critical scale needed in the US to succeed as a mass-market brand like Toyota, which is what they are obviously patterning themselves on. Whether they can increase their market share to get that scale is the key question. The market has become so difficult and competitive, I have some serious doubts that they can. In which case they will have to just accept continued losses year in, year out. Or…
VW still lacks the critical scale needed in the US to succeed as a mass-market brand like Toyota, which is what they are obviously patterning themselves on. Whether they can increase their market share to get that scale is the key question. The market has become so difficult and competitive, I have some serious doubts that they can. In which case they will have to just accept continued losses year in, year out. Or…
One thing that seems to be working in VW’s favor at present is there seems to be some commonality between what sells here and what sells in China, so their market leading position in China can be leveraged to amortize development of the extra large vehicles that also sell here. The extra large Passat we get here, and the Atlas, are only offered in one other market in the world, China. The rumor mill has said that the next VW SUV to arrive here is neither the T-Roc or T-Cross, but a model in development for China.
Too bad that VW stumbled so badly making the transition from the Bug’s architecture to the Golf, but VW would have had it rough in the 70s anyway, because European production costs were higher than Japanese costs. I remember when the exchange rate was something over 300 Yen to the dollar, vs the current.114.
The mainstream Japanese cars of the 70s were pretty primitive compared to a Rabbit. You could cover almost everything made by Toyota and Datsun with the description “OHC 4 driving rear wheels with McPherson strut front suspension, and a leaf sprung live axle in back”. Combine a relatively cheap price, due to both primitive design and cheap labor, with superior reliability, and it’s a wonder VW hung on while all it’s mass market European competitors bailed out.
I got a personal exposure to the VW/Japanese comparison about a decade later. My (American built) 85 GTI exhibited those German traits of solidity and being a great road car. But it was in the shop enough to build a service folder that was half an inch thick for things like fuel injection issues and a water leak in the body that the dealer could not solve. This was in its first 2 years.
When I met the future Mrs JPC she was about 4 months into a new 88 Accord. By the time that car was 2 years old (we were married by then) it had precisely one defect – a passenger side rear view mirror lens that got an almost imperceptible spot of discoloration in really cold weather. The dealer couldn’t see it and refused to replace it.
I wanted to love the VW and it let me down. I wanted to dislike the Honda and it made me respect it, and finally love it.
Compare this report with the 1978 Diesel Golf long term, also by R&T:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/vintage-reviews/vintage-review-vw-rabbit-diesel-extended-use-report/
They had a broken crankshaft on that one too!
Although it did better than the gasser, overall expenses were higher than they should have been.
In the early/mid 1970’s, foreign car buyers in America who wanted air conditioning took a huge chance on what they got.
My ’74 Fiat 128 had such a poorly designed and installed dealer add on A/C system that getting the alternator and A/C compressor belts tight enough was a human physical impossibility. The hotter it became in New Orleans, the hotter the barely adequate cooling system became.
A friend’s ’75 Renault “Le Car” had a (again) dealer installed A/C kit on it that thumped, rumbled and shook the car every time it was turned on. Eventually the compressor fell off the car one day, removing every fan belt on the car.
My ’71 Datsun 240Z had a barely adequate A/C system only if you didn’t try to combine the A/C usage with rush hour traffic conditions.
The Buick (again!) dealer installed A/C on my ’71 Opel Manta/1900 used the same huge compressor that the V8 engine Buicks did. The A/C was smooth operating, cooled the car well, but when the A/C compressor engaged, the car became a dangerously slow dog. At 60 mph on Interstate 10, the car would drop down to 54 mph when the massive compressor kicked in.
Only Toyota understood the needs and desires of air conditioning craving American car buyers in this time period. Starting with my girl friend’s ’71 Toyota Corona, every Toyota I drove or rode in had a competent, c-c-cold A/C system that performed well, didn’t unduly drag down the engine’s performance or over-tax the car’s cooling system.
The higher priced foreign cars fared little better.
The A/C on a family member’s early 1970’s BMW 6 series coupe was little better than a cool, wet washcloth on your face. It roarrrrrrred away and …sounded…powerful; but was not at all.
My Mother’s 1972 Mercedes-Benz 250-C HVAC system had all the quietness and complexity of a Western-Auto add on unit. The Borg-Warner copied A/C compressor rumbled quite noticeably at idle and certain rpm ranges.
To the credit of the M-B engineers, the add on, front of the radiator electric cooling fan (quite the novelty in 1972!) kept the cooling system happy; the noisy unit did cool down the car’s interior well.
The ’80 Rabbit my family bought new was such a Deadly Sin (electronics gremlins galore including malfunctioning headlights and a persistent antifreeze leak into the engine) that my family, which had been VW loyalists til that point (Ghia, Bus, multiple Bugs), never bought one again. My own experiences with shopping for a car and making the mistake of walking onto a VW dealer’s lot – once just after the diesel debacle happened – ensure that I will never darken their doors again. The practices of the sales staff there were as sleazy and crooked as I’d never experienced before.
The report may have been briefer if it had started with the bits which had NOT died or fallen off, though that may have reduced the first sentence somewhat: “The left-hand front headlamp unit of our long-term Golf is still in factory-fresh condition, which is pleasing to report. Beyond that point, and if one excludes what VW argue are wear-and-tear items (engine, carburettor, air-conditioner, interior controls, lights, trim, suspension, electrics, and gearchange), the car has unfortunately been less reliable than we would have liked, and quite a few items have had to be replaced.”
This reminds me of the one and only Honda I ever bought, a brand-new 1985 Accord sedan. After about less than a year and 10,000 miles, the front rotor discs warped and had to be replaced. Honda would not cover it because they were classified as ‘wear and tear’ items. After the repair (at my cost), I immediately traded the car in. It soured me on Hondas so much that I never bought another. And, from what I’ve read, short-lived brakes (presumably not covered under warranty) are endemic of Hondas to this day.
It also feeds into the auto industry axiom that if a manufacturer wants to cut costs somewhere, two of the most popular areas to do it are with the construction and materials for the brakes and seats. It makes sense since those are two places that won’t begin deteriorating until after the brand-new car has been sold to someone and has a few miles on it.
Honda seems to love saving weight on car batteries and brakes: both seem to always be undersized for the application (or climate, in the case of the battery). They also have struggled with building adequately powerful A/C units for a long time, although finally my 2012 Civic had excellent A/C, the downside being it really bogged that 1.8L down. On my father’s ’07 Fit with big glass area and a black interior, the A/C can’t really keep up even in 85 degree weather on a sunny day.
“On my father’s ’07 Fit with big glass area and a black interior, the A/C can’t really keep up even in 85 degree weather on a sunny day.”
Interesting, because I have never had an issue with the A/C in ours. Of course our car is white with the beige interior (with a black dash and cargo cover, though). I will admit that it cools better on the hottest days when turned to “recirc” but this has long been an issue on systems in cars not built in USA. Trust me, my Mrs. is the acid test for a vehicle a/c system and she never complained about driving our Fit in hot weather. She would not last 30 minutes in the Miata on a hot day. 🙂
The early Golfs had a terrible reputation in Australia too, which made them dirt cheap second-hand. In our case it seemed to come down to poor quality local assembly, with a workforce having been used to building Beetles for 20-odd years (guess they could just about do it in their sleep!) now having to bolt together something radically different. The falling dollar versus European currencies during this period made the car much more expensive than the Beetle it effectively replaced, and the quality could not sustain the premium price (to say the least). Renault hit the same snag with the 18 around the same time (replacing the 12), and went down. No formerly-cheap brand could sustain a massive price hike, especially not with the Japanese makes offering premium-level assembly quality at an affordable price (Honda excepted – they were premium-priced cars here).
I think VW quit the Aussie market altogether for a while after local production shut down, but they’ve been coming back strongly over the past 10-15 years. Renault, however, is nowadays a company only enthusiasts would know about here.
The poor quality of the first US Rabbits is so GM-like. The Rabbit was such a great-looking and designed car, a game-changer, yet VW shot themselves in the foot with the really miserable execution. Yeah, it was improved by 1977 but as with any other car, those first impressions go a very long way to crushing a sales success. VW got real lucky as news traveled much slower back then. With the lightning speed with which news travels today, there’s no way anything built that poorly would have survived.
If it weren’t for the great marketing and the (relative) reliability of the rear-engined vehicles, resulting in VW loyalists who continue to buy them, no matter what, VW would have vanished from the US market long ago.
My experience with a 1977 VW Scirocco. A lovely car that would run rings around many cars at the time. A blast to drive, but-
– Poorly designed alternator brackets, fabricated steel with rubber bushings. It required a braided ground strap that broke more than once a year, resulting in a drained battery. Of course the warning light didn’t come on, but you noticed the turn signals getting s_l_o_w_e_r and eventually the radio quits. I eventually carried around a length of copper wire to effect an on road repair. Then those brackets broke from metal fatigue.
– This caused the batteries to fail in ~2 years.
– The valve stem seals leaked. I replaced them myself before VW offered the fix. Got Nada.
– Under warranty the fancy fuel injection air sensor stuck open causing very high idle speed. Dealer took more than one visit to fix. It was just the sensor plate rubbing against the horn
– A rubber hose to the cold start injector would disintegrate every year or so.
Expensive ‘U’ shape so couldn’t use generic hose. Rubbish.
-The fuse box caught fire. I opened the hood, disconnected the battery, and called a tow to the dealer from a pay phone. I contemplated letting it burn. That was an expensive one.
– The clutch cable broke, resulting in parts dropped on the road. Picked them up and drove sans clutch to my sister’s house nearby. DIY repair with expensive dealer parts.
I replaced the ’77 with an ’83. Much better, but still had several quality defects (missing weld on door check, hole in the valve cover). This one was built by Karmann.
To this day I cannot say VW “Warranty” without making air quotes with my fingers. The same applies to VW Dealer “Service”. I haven’t bought a new car or any car with a warranty since. Much easier just to get out the tools and fix it. Oh, and no more VW’s.
26.9 mpg average, out of a 2,000 lb car with ~70 hp.
Think about that for a second.