Older cars can be like diamonds in the rough – sometimes they need some polishing to suit a new owner’s tastes. And often, the only appropriate reaction to modifications not done to your taste (okay, we’ve all scoffed under our breath at someone else’s choices) is one question – how would I do it differently? Here we have a case in point – the seller of this 1987 Golf GTI 16 valve , for sale in Edmonds, WA for $3600, has a very solid car with some modifications made to his taste.
As a replacement for the antique-looking Karmann Ghia, which dated back to 1955, VW designed a new replacement. Heavily influenced by the wedge cars of the period – take a look at yesterday’s Alfetta GTV, a Lotus Esprit, or even a Lamborghini Countach – they successfully came up with a new interpretation of the sports-coupe-on-econobox-platform story. As they were inexpensive cars, many have disappeared, having succumbed to youthful overexuberance combined with youthful budgets. But there are still a few around if you look hard, and that’s how you can find this 1980 Volkswagen Scirocco S for sale for $1499 in Puyallup, WA.
The streets of Oakland and Berkeley share the same variety of obscure cars found in San Francisco, if not more so. The mixture of college professors and students, immigrants from all over the world, and people of diverse political leanings mean you can sell a few of anything there. And that’s how you can see, say, a Lotus Europa, first-generation Mazda 626 coupe, and Subaru DL liftback coupe on the way in to work. While VWs are still relatively mainstream cars, the attrition rate of disposable cars means that many have disappeared from the road. And that brings us to today’s cars.
Rusty But Trusty 