Posts Tagged ‘passat’

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Watercooled Freitag – 1980 VW Dasher Turbodiesel

April 15, 2016

In 2016, if you tell someone you have a water-cooled VW, they’ll look at you funny. After all, it’s been nearly 40 years since the last aircooled cars were made (in German, at least), and quite a few of the early water-cooled cars have virtually disappeared. With the benefits of hindsight and attrition, they’re quite interesting cars that can be fun to drive. Except when they’re lumbered by a 49hp diesel, which is why some marque enthusiasts have had fun replacing the diesel engines on their first-generation water-cooled cars with later powerplants, as seen in this 1980 VW Dasher Turbodiesel coupe for sale for $4400 in North Portland, OR.

1980 VW Dasher Turbodiesel right front

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2 Waters Please – 1982 VW Quantum and 1978 VW Rabbit

January 27, 2016

Until recently, VW was on pretty solid ground as a growing presence on the North American market, but let’s take a look back at a time when VW’s existence here was very much in question. The North American Quantum definitely epitomized that time, with a pokey 1-7-liter 4-cylinder, awkward styling, and a marketing strategy that didn’t know where it wanted to be – frugal and well-made like a Beetle, or spartan-lux like most of its European contemporaries. Indeed, there’s little except maybe the goodwill and better service network from the Beetle days to differentiate this from a contemporary Renault, and we all know where Renault went in the late 1980s. So let’s check out a remnant from those early water-cooled days, this 1982 VW Quantum for sale for $1299 in Portland, OR.

1982 VW Quantum right front

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Car For Sale! – 1979 Volkswagen Dasher

October 10, 2015

Joining the VW lineup just before the Golf, and being the first launched of VW’s current lineup of modern, economical front wheel drive cars, the VW Passat must have seemed scary for the company at the time. So far, VW had been very conservative, sticking to its lineup of flat-4 powered, rear-engine rear-wheel-drive, air-cooled cars, but given the complaints from the public about the ancient technology upon which their cars were based, they were forced to do something drastic. Imagine any major car company changing their whole platform strategy today – suppose BMW dropped all their six-cylinder engines, and went to front-wheel-drive, turbocharged four cylinders as their dominant powertrain – it’s really a pretty remarkable move. Of course, VW held on to the old Beetle-based cars for six more years in Europe, US/Canada and Asia, and continued far further in Mexico and down through Brazil, as well as South Africa and doubtless others. Check out VW’s first successful (you wouldn’t call the K70 successful or VW’s, would you?) foray into conventional powertrains here with this 1979 VW Dasher for sale for an unknown price that can’t be more than $1000, right?

1979 VW Dasher left front

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