My VW Rabbit's 10 year birthday - by the date on the sticker. 168131 miles.

            Photo taken 12/2/86. Without these guys at Stevens Creek VW, my brother Ian, Richard Sealey's Water Cooled Idiot's book, Peter Aschwanden's drawings, Craftsman tools, Lori's support and indulgence, and help from just about everyone who came in contact with me or this car, we could never have gotten to this point. I bought it as a 2 year old, probably a lease return, 24,000 miles, in 1978. $4400. When I finally sold it, in the 1990s, it had 209,000 miles, plenty of pep and a little car-port pillar rubbing on one of the front fenders. It was beyond economic repair, with a cash value of $650. 

I'd carried a ton of rocks in it more than once- all the way down to the bump stops. It had carried 4 adults from the Bay Area to Southern California as required, also 2 up to Tahoe. It had forded the flooded streets and freeways of 1983 and survived the great freeze of 1987 or 88. It had everything needed for a road trip - good view, lots of space inside, reliable. It was my commuter and utility vehicle, and it spoiled me utterly. Once I'd mastered the idiosyncracies of the fuel injection fuel pump and its under-engineered electrical system. Nice people, the Germans, but they're not quite as good as they *think* they are.

In that time It had needed a replacement head and I'd put a new-to-me 4 speed transmission from Kevin's friend's 5 speed swap in. Ian and I 'did' the CV joints, 8 hours flat from parking it to out of the shower, dressed, and ready to take our wives out for dinner. Front seats and the cover under the hatchback had been replaced from the German car recycler in the junkyard neighborhood between Almaden Expressway and uh, the big north/south street that ran past Southern Lumber - Monterey Highway? At Alma, on the other side of the expressway from Willow Glen. It was on its fourth fuse panel and I'd had to replace the winder for the sunroof once. New struts and shocks, new front wheel bearings, blah blah blah. Replaced the fuel injection metering block once. A wild story, that.

It had a variety of names, "Panama Brown" after the orangey brown color, "Vincent Van Golf", but they didn't really stick. It was "The Rabbit" or "Our Rabbit" or "Bill's Rabbit". I'd pay $4400 for another like it tomorrow!

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Taken on: March 24, 2013

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