Sold when double-digit horsepower and front-wheel drive were acceptable in a pickup.
The Rabbit wasn’t the first water-cooled Volkswagen car to show up in North American VW showrooms, because the Dasher (known as the Passat elsewhere) appeared here as a 1974 model. The Rabbit debuted as a 1975 model on our shores, quickly outselling its Audi-derived big brother. Noting how well small Japanese pickups were selling, Volkswagen of America developed a pickup version and began selling it here in 1979. Today’s Junkyard Treasure is one of those nearly extinct Rabbit Pickups, which I found in a Denver-area yard last summer (sorry, Mk1 Golf fans—it got crushed months ago).
Memories of gas lines and odd-even rationing remained strong in 1982—a few years after the Iranian Revolution sent fuel prices through the roof—so Volkswagen offered American Rabbit shoppers a stingy diesel engine. Since the oil-burner made just 52 hp in 1981 (up from 48 in 1979, and I can tell you from experience the Diesel Rabbit was terrifyingly slow regardless of the additional four horses), plenty of VW shoppers selected the hot-rod gasoline engine and its mighty 74 hp. That engine is in this truck.
It also has the base four-on-the-floor manual transmission. The diesel version got a standard five-speed, which cost an extra 205 bucks in the gas-burner, or about $648 in 2022 bucks. No automatic transmission option was available in the Rabbit Pickup.
The Rabbit Pickup remained available in North America through 1984, but production continued elsewhere for many years. In Europe, it was known as the Golf Caddy (get it?) and continued to roll off the Sarajevo assembly line through 1992. Brazilians knew it as the Saveiro. South African production kept going all the way through 2007.
The list price for this truck with gas engine and four-speed was $6775, which comes to around $21,411 after inflation. A new Chevy S-10 had an MSRP of just $6270 ($19,815 now) that year, undercutting the Rabbit Pickup by quite a bit. Meanwhile, the Datsun 720 cost $6149 ($19,432); the Mazda-built Ford Courier was $6614; the Mitsubishi-built Plymouth Arrow was $6408 ($20,251); the Isuzu P’Up was $6129 ($19,369), and the bulletproof Toyota Hilux a mere $6298 ($19,903). That’s some tough competition, all equipped with rear-wheel drive, and I’m skipping a few here (plus the very affordable Ford Ranger would hit the showrooms a year later).
I arrived seemingly moments after this truck hit the inventory, and a local Mk1 Golf aficionado was already harvesting many goodies from it. He was kind enough to let me shoot my photographs before stripping it completely clean.
The junkyard shopper moves in the same Colorado Front Range Caddy social milieu as the team that races a very successful (in the slowest class, where consistency counts for more than quick lap times) Diesel Rabbit in the 24 Hours of Lemons, so I feel reasonably certain that some of today’s Junkyard Treasure will live on in the Caddy Daddy racin’ machine (above).
Keyword: 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit Pickup Is Junkyard Treasure