At Volkswagen – after decades of delays, this has been exacerbated by the enormous costs of the savings card Payoffs and Tatra lawsuits stemming from the Type 1 Beetle’s origins – after all, when mass production of water-cooled cars began, the 1973 Passat (known on our shores as the Dasher) was the first to roll off the assembly line. The all-new Golf aka Rabbit appeared the following year, and alongside it came a Giugiaro-style sporty derivative. That car was the Scirocco and I found one of those first generation machines at a serve yard in the Denver area.

By 1979, the Scirocco had to compete against such sporty Japanese coupes as the Datsun 310GX and Honda Prelude, not to mention Fiat’s 128 Sport hatchback and even the Brava two-door. American Motors even offered an AMX version of the Spirit that outpriced the Scirocco and featured a high-torque straight-six engine. Nevertheless, the Scirocco sold well enough here at this time.

This one suffers from some rust damage in the usual places in addition to being generally beat up.

This JVC tape deck is from the mid 1980’s so it’s possible this car hasn’t worked since Reagan was in the White House.

The interior is laden with decades of rodent waste, no doubt laden with hantavirus. But I’ve seen worse – a much worse.

The 1,457cc in-line four in this car was rated at 71bhp in 1979, which wasn’t too bad for a car that didn’t quite weigh 2,000 pounds.

The German-language tank sticker is a nice Continental touch, although the RON octane rating is likely what convinced many American Scirocco owners to run premium when they didn’t have to (91 RON is roughly equivalent to our 87 octane).

You could get this car with an automatic transmission, but that added $125 to the purchase price (about $530 in 2022 dollars adjusted for inflation). This one has the base four on the floor manual.

In the early 1980s, when brilliant cartoonist Robert Armstrong wanted to show how The Man would brainwash Mickey Rat into becoming a productive member of society, he gifted the once-rebellious rodent a Scirocco. I’ve noticed that since high school, so I remain suspicious of the Scirocco.

You people know how to live!