1977 Volkswagen Rabbit - Champagne Edition!
I could not believe my luck. Riding my bicycle toward Grant's Tomb in Manhattan, I found this immaculately preserved 1977 Volkswagen Rabbit parked along Riverside Drive South. This is the original VW Golf, called the Rabbit in North America, and despite its now-legendary reliability problems - in comparison to the bulletproof Beetle - it remains a classic, the first significant Volkswagen of the watercooled age.
This Rabbit was a "Champagne Edition" model, a limited editon sold to celebrate the sale of the one millionth Golf/Rabbit in the United States. Champagne Rabbits got wider tires and silvery green or light gold metallic paint (the silvery green was classier), and something VW fans could have done without, velvet upholestry. How un-German!
The 1977 Rabbit - still made in Wolfsburg, the Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania plant not open just yet - boasted 78 hp from a 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine. The '77 Rabbit was the first Rabbit to have fuel injection. Ironically, the Beetle hardtop - in its last year in the U.S. in 1977 - had already gained that feature.
1977 Volkswagen Rabbit - Champagne Edition!
I could not believe my luck. Riding my bicycle toward Grant's Tomb in Manhattan, I found this immaculately preserved 1977 Volkswagen Rabbit parked along Riverside Drive South. This is the original VW Golf, called the Rabbit in North America, and despite its now-legendary reliability problems - in comparison to the bulletproof Beetle - it remains a classic, the first significant Volkswagen of the watercooled age.
This Rabbit was a "Champagne Edition" model, a limited editon sold to celebrate the sale of the one millionth Golf/Rabbit in the United States. Champagne Rabbits got wider tires and silvery green or light gold metallic paint (the silvery green was classier), and something VW fans could have done without, velvet upholestry. How un-German!
The 1977 Rabbit - still made in Wolfsburg, the Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania plant not open just yet - boasted 78 hp from a 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine. The '77 Rabbit was the first Rabbit to have fuel injection. Ironically, the Beetle hardtop - in its last year in the U.S. in 1977 - had already gained that feature.