#Volkswagen rabbit

[demoralised]

Mk1

[thecargays]

Just in time for Easter 🐰

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

Do y'all know anything about a Volkswagen Rabbit? Recently got a 2009 VW Rabbit and I wanted to know if there were any fun facts or smth about it :] ik it was discontinued in 2009 but I HEARD that VW is making an electric Rabbit, but that's neither here or there

Do I know anything about Volkswagen Rabbits?

Well, I know it was called Golf in other markets, and that Volkswagen Golf is the name of my car, so we've got two things already! ;D

Needless to say, mine's the one on the left - and it's from the very same year as the first electric one!

This never got full scale production and makes mine look like a rocket (and believe me that's quite a feat) but it did exist!

As far as full scale production goes, the first electric Rabbit was the e-Golf that launched ten years ago with the generation right after yours and stopped production in 2020. But rumors do seem to have the next Rabbit generation to be nothing but. As far as fun facts on the Rabbit, though, have my other posts on its origin and some funky editions!

Links in blue are posts of mine explaining the words in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

STOP IT THOSE ARE THIRD GENERATION OPEL KADETTS >:( IT EVEN SAYS SO ON THE LAST ONE'S PLATE! LOOK! EVEN WIKIPEDIA SAYS-

Hm. I guess the world has a lot of very different views on what this is called.

You can just feel a weird story coming, can't you. And indeed, our story starts in '73, with the other war America is losing.

The United States are having an existential crisis over the discovery that oil is a finite resource, the hours spent lined up in front of starving gas stations have given Americans time to realize cars that use less of it are neat, so their own country's cars are getting positively barbecued by 'imports', i.e. cars made abroad. Some could argue it took 'domestic' brands around a decade to cobble together decent competition, and in that timespan foreigners were left free reign to gather an unprecedented foothold - American brands would never return to their domination of their home market. The local automotive output was so dire they became known as "malaise era" cars: the larger offerings that practically symbolized the country got shrunken in size and neutered in sportiness to cope with the wimpier engines caused by the new emission standards, and, while the foreigners moved ungodly numbers of the fuel efficient small cars they'd been making all along, yankees were pathetically scrambling to figure out what the hell 'small car' meant. And here's a hint: if you're bragging about how large it is you've not got it yet.

Oh, and it gets worse! But to learn just how much, since even those familiar with my engine layouts post may not have a sense of scale for engine size or even know precisely how it's measured, we must make a brief stop at the explanation station! Choo Choo! The combustion chamber, the volume above the piston in which the combustion happens, shrinks and expands as the piston goes up and down its travel (whose length, you'll love this one, is called 'stroke'). The change in volume between the top and bottom of the cylinder's stroke, aka the volume of air the cylinder's movement displaces, is called cylinder displacement. Add up the displacement of every cylinder and that's your engine displacement! See? That was easy!

As this stolen and pefrectionistically tweaked graphic points out, displacement is expressed in two ways: - cc, or cubic centimeters - ci, or cubic inches While in ci even large displacements remain in the hundreds, in cc even small displacements reach the thousands, so what in ci is a 250 engine in cc would be a 4096 engine, which really lacks a ring to it. Usually, then, such an engine would be called a 4.1, being pretty much 4.1L because 1L is 1000cc - how cool is having a measurement system codified by people who actually knew what they were doing? Really guys you should give metric another shot sometime.

And now, an example for scale: I happen to own one of the small cars that was whipping yankee ass the hardest (bar perhaps the Viet Congs' jeeps) - a first generation Volkswagen Golf, that reached their shores as Rabbit. It was sold with four cylinder engines, the wimpiest -that would be mine- a 1.1L, the mightiest a 1.6 - and the spicy sporty version, the GTI, with its splitter and wider fenders and sick ass wheels made out of the P of tire supplier Pirelli...

...that little riot, in its last years, got upgraded to -huzzah- a 1.8!

The Pacer, meanwhile?

Okay, it was also offered with six cylinder engines as small as 3.8L -not even four times the size of mine!- and the V8 was just for those who wanted something faster. Which made me wonder: if the GTI hit 100 km/h (that's 0-60 for you yankees) in 8 seconds, what'll the V8 Pacer's time be? And so I looked it up, got lost in laughter, and desperately looked for other figures because they cannot possibly be talking about the V8, and then realizing that no, the V8 really did 0-60 in fourteen seconds, and laughing for other minutes.

I could bring more examples, but in short, to call the American small car offerings especially inadequate would be charitable. But what if they didn't try to make a decent small car? Wouldn't it be better to just let the foreigners figure it out, and then ship some units over to sell under a brand of their own? Well, that's the idea behind captive imports, the name given to vehicles born through this specific form of badge engineering. And what better foreign manufacturer for General Motors to hit up than Opel, the German vehicular colossus that GM happened to own and already have been importing cars of, selling them through Buick dealers! So essentially, GM needed dear god anything acceptable badly, and decided to bring over what someone else had cooked up and spotted the right business from inside the house. However, the Steamed Hams parallels end here, because they openly sold it as the Opel Kadett it was. While it still was.

But due to that whole crisis thing, the Deutschmark rose in value relative to the American dollar (so, for the economically inept, the same amount of Destumchrak cost more dollars to obtain) such that, while Opel asked for the same Dusthemcrhak for each car, the cost to Buick rose past sustainability. And, to save you the short story about the boss's lover answering the phone, they did what you do when a supplier's nationality causes their product to skyrocket in cost: find a supplier elsewhere. See, normally badge engineered cars can be split between those jointly developed by two manufacturers and ones merely picked up by another manufacturer after the fact. This, instead, was both, since Opel developed it with help from Japanese manufacturer Isuzu, which themselves made and sold it as the Isuzu Bellet Gemini at first and later just Isuzu Gemini. So Buick just started buying units from them instead. However, to denote that the car was the same but different (read: more cheaply built) they cobbled up the name Opel by Isuzu. After a year, someone must've realized that name was ass and demanded it be changed - presumably forgetting to specify to replace it with a non-ass one, since it got changed to Buick Opel.

And no one gave a shit. Because really, no one gave a shit about the car in general, reserving their attention for more established alternatives like the Toyota Corolla or the aforementioned Rabbit. So Buick devised a cunning strategy: the Buick Opel 5 Car Showdown - also known as possibly the hardest I ever laughed at automotive advertising, and pretty much the only reason I actually made this whole post.

Essentially the idea was to evaluate the Buick Opel in various showdowns against compacts people actually gave a shit about and at the end of it score them overall. Thing is, the problem with such a test is that it has to be clearly impartial for its conclusions to be worth anything. "Oh, so was it, like, just so laughably rigged?" No. Exactly the opposite. It was laughably not rigged.

Yeah.

To be fair, there is an area in which it came out on top, and the ad frames this as a result that proves it's a car worth considering just as much as every other. Really, it's hard not to be endeared by the candid honesty of this copy.

Of course, none of this makes it much less hilarious to imagine whoever worked at marketing for Volkswagen grabbing the paper and finding out General Motors had bought a three page ad to tell the world the Rabbit was better than their own car.

Easiest paycheck of their fucking life.

Okay, now that you've seen the ads about how General Motors said my car is better than theirs, you can go. Or, if "GM then renamed the car Isuzu I-Mark" sounds like riveting content to you, hop under the Read More, because hoo boy is there some weird shit.

One place where our poor little car fared better was Australia, where it was sold as the Holden Gemini, since Holden, as I hinted at previously, was the Australian arm of General motors, just like Vauxhall is the British arm of it. Vauxhall has for almost all its life just been a badge they slapped on Opels, and Holden has been that to varying extents, but due to the Australian obsession with a type of car that just doesn't sell elsewhere they've always had some bespoke stuff going for them. The tables turned this time, it would seem, since the Holden Gemini was just a rebadge (albeit of the Isuzu model) and the Vauxhall Chevette was a different model, with a nick of unique styling about it in the form of a different front...

...perhaps more reminiscent of the Chevrolet Chevette sold in North America.

Wait, why's the name in green? Was General Motors selling Americans the same car twice? Well, not quite.

Though built upon the Kadett's platform, this is a somewhat different car. And we could argue about whether it's fair of Wikipedia to cite that under a different name the Kadett was known by. We could, if this was what it was included over. But it wasn't. Because the Brazilian Chevrolet Chevette was the same car. In the first four pictures of the original post you can faintly make out a Chevette badge next to the right headlight. Here's a picture of its restyling and HOLD ON A SECOND

Yeah, these cars were a big cauldron of mess. For another example, since Holden wanted to sell wagons and panel vans, which Isuzu didn't make, those were derived from, respectively, the Opel Kadett wagon and the Vauxhall Chevette panel van, onto which Gemini fronts were grafted.

And that's not even all the places these were made and sold in! South Korean manufacturer Saehan struck a deal with GM to sell these as Seahan Geminis (and exporting them as Saehan Birds), and when they updated it the name changed to Saehan Maepsy, which when Saehan got bought by bigger South Korean manufacturer Daewoo became Daewoo Maepsy, which later got updated again into the Daewoo Maepsy-na (new)...

and GM Argentina made and sold the car as the Opel K-180.

And then in 1992 it got even weirder, when Brazil made a slight update aimed at the Argentinian market and called it GMC Chevette.

You know. GMC. The truck/SUV/van/bus brand that, in its 112 years of existence, has never been stamped on a car before or since the 3 year run of this thing. Imagine finding out that, for three years in some relatively random country, Ferrari sold a pickup. It's starting to feel like someone warned automotive manufacturing the world over of approaching alien invaders that could only be warded off by enough names for the Opel Kadett.

Unfortunately, the Wikipedia page foregoes mention of the heroic efforts of Uruguayan operation Grumett - Yah! Here's an estate called Grumett 250M Rural! Yah! Here's an update of it called Grumett Gazelle Estate! a coupe called Grumett Coupe! Yah! Here's an update of it called Grumett Sport Coupe! Yah! We export these as Grumett Condors! Yah! Take that, extraterrestrial plurikadettonomophobes!

This mess of different manufacturers involved meant that all those different names, once the manufacturers worked on updating and replacing the model, ended up on completely different cars!

Here's a 1980 Opel Kadett/Vauxhall Astra...

...here's a 1983 Chevrolet Chevette...

...here's a 1984 Daewoo Maepsy-Na...

...here's a 1984 Opel Kadett...

...here's a 1985 Isuzu/Holden Gemini...

...here's a 1990 Isuzu Gemini...

...and here's a 1992 GMC Chevette.

You somehow get the vibe that Argentina wasn't doing quite as well as Japan.

So, this was the story of a world car and the ways various parts of the world interpreted it. And if you thought it was excruciating to read, try writing the damn thing. Not just in terms of the sheer work of getting any sort of narrative flow going, it was a mess to research - the info could get unclear or even contradicting, "it's more complicated than that" was a common refrain, and there seemed to be a near endless supply of tidbits that- wait, what's that? It's too big for a bird, too fast for a plane... oh no... it's a stereotypically-shaped flying saucer!!!

*the unrealistically humanoid aliens dive towards the helpless crowd around me, but as my eyes light up with the fierce courage of the chosen one, I rush towards the oncoming ship against the wave of people I urge to stand back, and when it seems close enough, I climb atop a conveniently placed statue of a riderless horse and fill my lungs at peak capacity*

IN MALAYSIA IT WAS CALLED OPEL CHEVETTE!

*the ship engulfs in flame, loses control and crumbles gracelessly onto the street and surrounding buildings, causing four debilitating injuries and 37 first degree burns*

Chevy Chevette Coupe

[rootbeercarguy]

[celasuffit]

Volkswagen Rabbit

[shoffty]

My 09 MK5 Rabbit

Decided to make a quick overview post of my 2009 MK5 Rabbit. Bought this car back in March of 2022 with around 96,000 miles on it at the time. It needed a little TLC but for the most part it was one owner with very low mileage. Pretty sure the car was only driven in the warmer months considering it had 0 rust. Bought it with the intention of being a daily. Has a 2.5 5 cylinder which is one of VW's most reliable engines ever, mated to a 5 speed manual. Perfect spec IMO. Now, onto the list of things I've done since owning it

Started with general maintenance. Oil change, spark plug change, needed new rear tires, just an overall overhaul on simple things.

After that I drove it and got used to it, just figuring out what else needed done.

Restored the headlights with Griot's Ceramic Headlight Restoration Kit (which I highly recommend).

Replaced the dogbone mount insert for a video for work.

Bought a set of Radi8 R8T12's speced at 18x8.5 +40 with some 215/40r18 Hankook's. Ran these with stock suspension for a month or two.

Finally got coilovers and dropped the car as low as I could reasonably go.

Threw on my MOMO Prototipo steering wheel that I had from my previous car.

Replaced engine and transmission mount.

Drove the car a bit, took a trip to Gatlinburg, just tried to enjoy the setup.

Front suspension needed an overhaul after the coilovers, so I got new aluminum LCA's with polyurethane bushings as well as new ball joints and tie rod ends.

Found a set of Audi A3 wheels that I decided to use as winter wheels

Ended up finding a APR Carbonio intake for a MK6 Golf that ended up fitting my car. Man I love NLA parts

Currently that's where the car sits. Going to work on redoing the interior this winter as well as getting a different set of summer wheels. I'm not stancy enough to really enjoy these Radi8's. Going to post more updates of this car when I can. If you want to see anything particular just let me know.

[gameraboy2]

Wilt Chamberlain for the 1979 Volkswagen Rabbit

[opendirectories]

[exitthedragon]

[untouchvbles]

Volkswagen Caddy at Waukesha Cars & Coffee (2024) - Meet 1 in Waukesha, WI.

[demoralised]

Mk1

[phasesphrasesphotos]

2023 - Year of the Rabbit

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

Now that I think about it, I should probably go nab a window crank from that 924 as well, since they share those too - along with a a lot of other stuff.

The door handles (out of frame, sorry), the glovebox door latch, even the steering wheel, differently-shaped horn plate aside, is the same two-spoke unit as my car's.

In fact the whole steering column is, complete with its funky stalk design where the right one kinda juts out the way of the key- which does bring up the noteworthy point that the key is on the right, breaking (at least in left hand drive cars) with Porsche's tradition of placing the key towards the door, in tribute to their Le Mans race cars of old.

See, up to the end of the '60s, the starting procedure of the race had the drivers line up in front of their cars, such that when the flag went down they had to rush into them, start them up and drive off.

Having the key towards the outside meant being able to crank the car while putting it in gear, thus driving off ahead of the cars beside you. Presumably with the idea that the circuit's interminable straight left plenty of time to worry about the seatbelt.

The tradition does live on to this day, which is a great way to spot the posers trying to pass their friend's Porsche off as their own to woo you into a quickie. However, if you are the one posing, this is a great story to tell as you start the car. Especially because, at the end of telling it, you can reveal that it's utter humbug Porsche embraces for optics, and the tradition started in the very first Porsche prototypes (long before Le Mans was even a dream) when funds were so tight that the ignition would be placed wherever required the least wire to reach, which happened to be towards the door. This, after crafting a story, and by extension a set of people who understand it to be the case, immediately positions you above them, thus portraying you as a pathway not just into the set of people who know, but among those who know better. Don't ever let it be said that I'm not here for y'all with primo dating advice.

got any fun tidbits about the porsche 944? :3

I've got a fun bit of one of those Porsches: the right indicator!

And that's a fun story, so I'll go with that.

Porsche, early to rise as always, spent all morning perfecting its latest project, a fancy little sportscar requested by none other than its day-one friend Volkswagen. After a morning spent, just like the days and nights before, working on the project with the trademark Porschefectionism, right on midday's strike the pencil was finally awarded its rightful rest. Attention turned to the phone - its dial was spun in that old, familiar pattern and, a concerning number of tones later, the line transmitted the clattering of a handset being fumbled up.

"whoizziiit?" "Guten Tag, Volkswagen! It's your friend Porsche!" "christus, tone down that vooooooice", Volkswagen yawned out. "Don't tell me I woke you up!", Porsche exclaimed flabbergasted. "i said tone it down, i've still got a splitting headache from friday. -a brief pause protested the incompleteness- and i guess from yesterday after seeing the bills. i'm really messed up. what do you want" "Oh, you will feel better now - I'm finally done!" After waiting a couple seconds, Volkswagen realized that wasn't going to be clarified. "with what" "The sportscar!" The brow furrowing could be heard from the other end of the line. "the what??" "The sportscar project, the one you commissioned me to design!" "what are you talking about?" Porsche adopted a conciliatory, clarifying tone, trying to empathize with the clearly hazy friend. "You called me Friday at 23:47, and asked me to design you a sportscar. You went on about loving me very much and wanting one of my "sick sportscar things" for a while, and then you hung up before I could ask for details. You seemed to be in a very busy room, so I didn't call back and just went to work."

A small silence filled the line.

"are you joking" "About what?" that was a no.

A small silence filled the line.

"fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck" "What's the problem?" "what did you design" "Oh, you'll love it! It's a transaxle-equipped, low-slung beauty using a 2.0l to-" "yeah bro, i'm sorry for what i... apparently told you, but like, that's all waaay too hardcore for me" "B-but... you asked me to design a sportscar..." "i was off my sheiβen that night bro. i don't remember anything past the sixth large can of dunkelbier." "Six cans of dunkelbier? But you drink those everyday!" "no, i mean those large cans, uhhh, what do you call them..." "...barrels?" "yeah." "But you do need a sportscar in your lineup... right?" "ugh, if i do i'll just flatten the golf or something. that project sucked all my money, dude." "B-but... I did all this work... and it came out so well... does it all have to go to waste then?", Porsche asked with a trembling voice that betrayed the full extent of the emotional hit - at last, waking up VW for good. "Oh, nonono! Don't worry! Uhh... you can make it yourself if you want to!" "But... but I've designed it to be built with your parts..." "Oh I can sell you the parts, it's no prob" That seemed to restore Porsche's spirits. "Really? That would be fantastic! Oh, I have a wonderful name for it already!" "Oh? What is it?" "924!" "...sure. Alright, we'll figure that out. Sieg heil bro" "Er, we don't say that anymore." "Fuck, you're right. Sorry, still a bit cloudy. Uhhh... what do people say now?" "Auf wiedersehn seems to be a popular option." "Auf wiedersehn then." "Auf wiedersehn"

Thus, Volkswagen went on to launch a lightly stepped on Golf it called Scirocco...

...and the project at the heart of our story would end up being made and sold by Porsche,

and as such, getting incrementally refined year over year over year, evolving into the 924 S, which then evolved into the more muscular 944...

...which itself, after three revisions and countless special versions, evolved into the 968.

Which itself, after a couple of special versions, almost thirty years from the 924's launch... ended production for good in 1995. And frankly, I have no idea what finally compelled Porsche engineers to let the damn thing be. Wait actually, hold on a second...

I have one idea.

Okay, to be fair, the exchange rate situation from the Kadett story had only gotten worse making a now dated platform too expensive to make sense and to low a seller to justify remaking. But worry not, they did still have the 911 to keep messing with. Combine that with Pokémon and they were still plenty enriched.

And indeed like the 911, this platform's development is essentially a long, drawn out cleansing of the VW components it started off heavily based on. While the 356 was simply based on a VW platform, though, the 924 was a hodgepodge of bits from all over - engine from the LT van, brakes from the K70, front suspension from a mix of Golf and Beetle...

(I can feel your pulse thumping at the mere idea of a mix of these)

...and of course, this extended to one of the most recycled part of all: the side indicators. And that's important. Because my old Volksvagen had a broken indicator, and I happened to know of an abandoned 924 'round here. C:

Although it did take some work (while the lens was the same, the base was different, so it had to be transplanted from my broken unit - there were probably a couple variants of this part for reasons), I now officially participate in the popular trend of putting Porsche bits on your Golf.

Not in a way that actually makes any difference, but hey.

Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question: if you liked this post, you might like those - or the blog’s Discord server, linked in the pinned post!

[periodically80s]

[rootbeercarguy]

Throwback to 2014