From 'Murrica, with love...
It was actually Volkswagen of North America, operating from their short-lived and ill-fated Westmoreland, Pennsylvania plant who came up with the idea for an El Camino-esque minitruck based on VW Rabbit mechanicals. In fact, all the ones sold overseas were built in Pennsylvania until a second assembly line was stood up at VW's South African plant.
In the same way U.S.-market Rabbits can be told apart from world market first generation Golfs by their square headlights, so too can their pickup truck variants.
Originally, under the hood you'd find either a 1.7L SOHC fuel injected inline-4 with 78 horsepower or else a 52 horsepower 1.6L diesel. The gasoline-engined ones had a 4-speed manual while the diesel added an overdrive fifth gear.
By being produced in their Pennsylvania plant the Rabbit Pickup avoided the "Chicken Tax" import tariffs born by imported light trucks that required odd workarounds like being imported without their beds attached, or the jump seats bolted in the beds of Subaru BRATs.
The stance on the truck in the photo, snapped in August of 2024 using a Nikon D2X & 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G DX zoom lens, indicates that this one likely has way more than 78 horses under the hood, a supposition supported by the rorty exhaust note it emitted.
My great uncle had one of these in the 1.6 diesel trim. He was a car dealer, and as gas was ridiculously expensive in 1981 ( if I recall correctly, it was at times in the 1.50 range), we did an extensive try out for agricultural use. In first gear, you could haul close to a 1000 lbs pretty comfortably up to about 15 miles an hour. You couldn't move it much faster than 15, because as soon as you you got into second, your rpm's would drop minute by minute until you had to downshift. However, even empty, trying to accelerate to 55 on a 1981 interstate took pretty close to a minute. Needless to say, in when we turned the VW in in November of that year, we bought a Ford F-150 for utility work. Even with a gutless 351, you could get up to 55 in less than 20 seconds, which was a hell of a lot less scary than the VW.
ReplyDeleteYeah, while they were structurally capable of dealing with a half-ton load in the cargo bed, it must have reduced acceleration to truly dire levels of sluggishness.
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