Car Of The Day: February 9, 2011

Today's car of the day is Zylmex's 1979 Volkswagen Rabbit.

The Volkswagen Golf is a small family car manufactured by Volkswagen since 1974 and marketed worldwide across six generations, in various body configurations and under various nameplates — as the Volkswagen Rabbit in the United States and Canada (Mk1 and Mk5), and as the Volkswagen Caribe in Mexico (Mk1).

The front-wheel drive Golf was Volkswagen's first successful replacement for the air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle. Historically, it is Volkswagen's best-selling model and the world's third best-selling model, with more than 25 million built by 2007.

Most production of the Golf was initially in the 3-door hatchback style. Other variants include a 5-door hatchback, estate/wagon (Variant, from 1993), convertible (Cabriolet and Cabrio, 1979–2002), and a Golf-derived notchback saloon/sedan, variously called Volkswagen Jetta, Volkswagen Vento or Volkswagen Bora (from 1979). The cars have filled many market segments, from basic personal cars, to high-performance hot hatches.

The Golf name is derived from the German word for Gulf Stream — and the period in its history when VW named vehicles after prominent winds, including also the Passat (after the German word for Trade wind), Jetta (after the Jet stream), Bora (after Bora) and Scirocco (after Sirocco). "Golf" is also a sport, a theme that is shared with the Volkswagen Polo.

Every generation of Golf has been a runner-up in the European Car of the Year awards, but only one has been a winner, the Golf Mk3 in 1992.

For more information and pictures of the real car please visit: Volkswagen Rabbit

With the multitude of different variations on the Volkswagen Rabbit/Golf MK I it is sometimes challenging to directly identify the model in question.  This one claims to be a GTI but US spec GTIs were only available starting in 1983 and had square headlights.  So is this a European spec Golf GTI?  Possibly, but it looks like it has US spec (the dreaded 5 MPH) bumpers.  So I'm going with pre-1980 US spec VW Rabbit.

The first Golf (VW internal designation Typ 17) began production in 1974, although it was marketed in the United States and Canada from 1975 to 1984 as the Volkswagen Rabbit and in Mexico as the Volkswagen Caribe. It was a water-cooled, front wheel drive design in a hatchback body style. It featured firmly sprung and damped, independent Macpherson strut front suspension and semi-independent Twist-beam rear suspension, that gave crisp handling and good roadholding, without being too uncomfortable. The Golf was Australian Wheels magazine's Car of the Year for 1975 and Irish Semperit Irish Car of the Year for 1978 and British What Car? magazine's Car of the Year for 1981. The name is short for Golf-Strom, German for Gulf Stream; it was named for that oceanic current to reflect its international character.

The Golf was designed by Italian automobile architect / designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, of the ItalDesign design studio. Giugiaro had also designed the Alfa-Sud and the Lotus Esprit Mk1.
The car changed little before being replaced (in Europe) by the Mark 2 version in 1984. However, air conditioning became available as an option on the domestic market in August 1975. The possibility to retrofit the installation, together with a larger battery, was offered to existing owners.

Contrary to popular myth, the Mk1 Golf GTI was not the first hot hatch by quite a margin. The Renault 5 Gordini comfortably predates the GTI, and is actually slightly faster than the Mk1 Golf GTI, managing 0-60MPH in the same 9.6 seconds or so as the first 1600 GTI, but squeezing out a further 2 mph over the Golf. Nevertheless, the Golf GTI was perhaps the first hot hatch with mass market appeal, and many other manufacturers since have created special sports models of their regular volume-selling small hatchbacks. The idea behind was rather straightforward - take a basic-transportation economy car and give it a high-performance package, making it practical and sporty. It was one of the first small cars to adopt mechanical fuel injection for its sports version, which raised power output of the 1588 cc engine to 110 PS (81 kW/108 hp). In 2004, Sports Car International declared the Golf Mk1 GTI to be the 3rd best car of the 1980s.
There was a minor facelift in 1980 which saw the adoption of larger rear lamp clusters (more in line with Giugiaro's original concepts), revised bumpers, a new dashboard with a more modern-looking instrument display, and for US versions rectangular headlights.