{"id":22837,"date":"2022-05-22T12:04:25","date_gmt":"2022-05-22T16:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=22837"},"modified":"2022-05-22T12:04:25","modified_gmt":"2022-05-22T16:04:25","slug":"junkyard-gem-1979-volkswagen-scirocco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=22837","title":{"rendered":"Junkyard Gem: 1979 Volkswagen Scirocco"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Volkswagen<\/a> \u2014 after decades of delay exacerbated by the huge expense of the Sparkarte<\/em> payouts<\/a> and Tatra lawsuits<\/a> arising from the Type 1 Beetle’s origins <\/a>\u2014 finally began mass-producing water-cooled cars, the 1973 Passat<\/a> (known as the Dasher on our shores<\/a>) was the first to roll off the assembly line. The brand-new Golf<\/a> aka Rabbit<\/a> appeared the following year, and alongside it came a sporty Giugiaro-styled<\/a> derivative. That car was the Scirocco, and I’ve found one of those first-generation machines in a Denver-area self-service yard.<\/p>\n

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By 1979, the Scirocco had to compete against such sporty Japanese coupes as the Datsun 310GX<\/a> and Honda Prelude<\/a>, not to mention the 128 Sport Hatchback<\/a> and even the Brava<\/a> two-door from Fiat<\/a>. American Motors even offered an AMX-ized version of the Spirit<\/a>, which beat the Scirocco on price and came with a high-torque straight-six engine. Still, the Scirocco sold well enough here around that time.<\/p>\n

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This one suffers from some rust damage in the usual spots, in addition to being generally beat up.<\/p>\n

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This JVC cassette deck dates back to the middle 1980s, so it’s possible that this car has been nonoperational since Reagan was in the White House.<\/p>\n

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The interior is loaded with what looks like decades of rodent detritus, no doubt laden with hantavirus<\/a>. I’ve seen worse<\/a>, though\u2014 a\u00a0lot<\/em> worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The 1,457cc straight-four in this car had a 71-horsepower rating in 1979, which wasn’t so bad for a car that didn’t quite weigh 2,000 pounds.<\/p>\n

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The German-language fuel-rating sticker is a nice Continental<\/a> touch, though the RON octane rating probably convinced many American Scirocco owners to use premium gas when they didn’t need to (91 RON is about the same as our 87 octane).<\/p>\n

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You could get this car with an automatic transmission, but that added 125 bucks to the purchase price (about $530<\/a> in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars). This one has the base four-on-the-floor manual<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Back in the early 1980s, when the brilliant cartoonist Robert Armstrong<\/a> wished to show how The Man would brainwash Mickey Rat<\/a> into being a productive member of society, he gave the once-rebellious rodent a Scirocco. This has stuck with me since I was in high school, so I remain suspicious of the Scirocco.<\/p>\n\n

You people know how to live!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Volkswagen \u2014 after decades of delay exacerbated by the huge expense of the Sparkarte payouts and Tatra lawsuits arising from the Type 1 Beetle’s origins \u2014 finally began mass-producing water-cooled cars, the 1973 Passat (known as the Dasher on our shores) was the first to roll off the assembly line. The brand-new Golf aka […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22838,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}