1983 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI

This product should be a cause for rejoicing among all those people who ever owned a Beetle or treasured the high-protein goodness of a BMW 2002, because this car marks a return to the fundamental German verities by Volkswagen’s badly withered American manufacturing and marketing arm. Sad to say, VW began to lose its way in America the day that somebody decided an American plant called for American management know-how—the same kind of management know-how that simply gave 23 percent of the U.S. market to the Japanese on a platter. It didn’t work any better for VW than it worked for GM. Now VW is on the way back with this great new GTI—not as fast as the European
model, but fast enough to keep up with the best Pontiac Trans Am your inflated dollars can buy, and at an unbelievably low price of $7995. In our introductory story on the GTI, we called it “the car we’ve all been waiting for,” and that’s exactly what it is. A fast, entertaining, high-quality car at an affordable price, built on an American assembly line by American workers.