TBD - The Beautiful Diastser
1981 Volkswagen Scirocco: The Beautiful Disaster I owned this car for exactly one year in 1986. That was apparently all the time we could afford to spend together. I was the third owner of this beautiful, and oh so troubled, first-generation Volkswagen Scirocco. I bought it used in June 1986 for $2,800 to be my college car at the Florida Institute of Technology. It was red, looked fantastic and drove brilliantly. When it drove.
Favorite Feature
Over our year together, the Scirocco decided it needed a steady stream of new parts. Belts. Fuel pump. Injectors. And remember, this was pre-Carfax. Buying a used car involved looking at it, driving it, asking the owner a few questions and then placing your faith in rolling the dice and German engineering. Over the course of a year, I spent about $1,000 in repairs on a $2,800 car—a fairly impressive achievement for a college student in 1986. Eventually, another student fell in love with it, helped considerably by its wonderfully period-correct red Starsky & Hutch-style livery. I happily sold it to him.
Best memory
The Scirocco developed a charming habit of breaking down pretty much everywhere between Melbourne and Palm Bay, Florida. This was 1986 before cell phones, before Google Maps and long before you could casually summon roadside assistance from an app. My roadside-assistance technology was a $10 roll of quarters. I carried it in the car so I could find a pay phone, call one of my friends and, with depressing regularity, call a tow truck.
Melbourne, FL