On Thu, 10 May 2001, Peter Ogilvie wrote:
:
:One car that should have been on the list is the VW Rabbit. Owned two of
:them. The first, a gas one, burned a quart of oil every 500 miles. The
:dealer told me, with a straight face, that the warranty only kicked in when
:consumption exceded a quart every 200 miles. Traded that in for a diesel
:which blew up with less than 40,000 miles after eating up just about
:everything else mechanical along the way. Car was so low to the ground and
:suspension so poor that we kept holing the oil pan. We ditched it right
:after the warranty ran out as it spent most of its early life at the dealer
:for such minor problems as an engine rebuild at 2,000 miles. This was a
:made in Germany Rabbit, too. Heard the American made ones were even worse.
:VW has never been the same since they started cooling them with water.
I had a VW Pickup (It's a rabbit that instead of having a back seat
had a pickup bed - the El Camino of economy cars.) when I was in high
school. It wasn't a stellar car, but it did run and run. It also
got about 40 MPG, and would have been competition for an 88 in a drag
race. I did the brakes once, had the front end fixed and the frame
straightened after hitting a mailbox (the mailbox was fine...)[1], the
glow plugs moe times than I care to think about, some electrical bits.
My parents got rid of it recently, with 200K on it with no engine work.
It still ran, but needed brake pipes, some things like that. Original
clutch, even.
It did do one truely bizarre thing once. My mother got one of the front
struts to stick in the fully compressed position. I have no idea how, and
i've never seen anything like that. The shop put a torch on it, and it
popped free.
David
[1] In defence of the car, the mailbox was mounted on a hardwood post from
a barn, about 12 inches square. I rotated the truck 270 around the post,
using the driver's side front wheel as the pivot point.
-- dscheidt@tumbolia.com Bipedalism is only a fad.
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