VW Corrado

We had really bad experience with a 77 rabbit that soured the VW experience. Dad still drove the wheels off of it, or really I should say, the oil seals out of it. It swilled oil, had a penchant for blowing fuel lines, and filled with water in the rain. Oh, it ate through oem mufflers annually until he just gave up and let one rot back there daily. But he loved that car, it drove superbly according to him.

The scirocco indeed had beautiful design, but both parents were like “nuh-uh,” until 84 when they gave the waterbox vanagon a shot. Also a car you could love, until it forced you not to. I still miss it. But it had a curse we couldn’t exorcise. It just wouldn’t start, or would quit unexpectedly, and nobody could solve it. Mom told me, “if you get it started, dont turn it off.” So every day I’d come home from school, and crank on it for a while. Weeks into this, it popped off one day, maybe a Thursday around 4pm and she came running out of the house with her purse, papers, my brother and sister. I was 15 with a permit. She threw them all in, said, “go! Go!”, and to the Honda dealer we went. She locked in a trade that day.

Years later a friend told me he figured it out - weeping MTF gets in the injector relays and makes them unreliable. Man, had we found that, I would have gladly taken it to college.
 
They don't send a lot of great cars to this side of the Atlantic.
There are simply great equalizers here that put a cap on what can be reasonably expected to sell.

When you have a Scat pack south of $50k, a Corvette at $60k and whatnot - they sorta suck the air out of models that could sell in Europe.

France had great hot hatches from the early 80's all the way to the late 90's. They had a good run. The Peugeot 306 S16 was an amasing car, then it became even more amazing with the restyling, which got it to 167hp (from 150), and a six-speed manual.
It cost close to 180000 Francs (about $27k in 1997 dollars) but hey, it had an AC.
Well, France also had quotas for Japanese cars, and these fell (European Union laws) around the time the 306 S16 6-speed was released. Subaru showed up on the very next day, with the WRX in sedan and wagon, for the same price. And that was it.

Jason Cammisa has an amazing video on YT about the E36 M3 in the US. Would have cost $10k more if it came to the US with the original S50 engine (286hp), so it came in the US with a S50B30US, which was a tuned version of a more mainstream BMW engine (243hp).
They sold like hot cakes, in the thousands.

The Canadian importer jumped through hoops and went to Hell and back to homologate and import the Euro spec in limited edition, for around $10k more, and sold a few dozen or less.
 
One thing about VR6 on Corrado was understeer. Holy moly!
Clearly remember those from when I really started reading Car & Driver. Really dug it, but had Mustang / muscle car fever.

IIRC there was a comment and cool picture how it would consistently lift the inside rear tire on tight/hard turns.

Pitty, the stars never aligned to get one.
 
Clearly remember those from when I really started reading Car & Driver. Really dug it, but had Mustang / muscle car fever.

IIRC there was a comment and cool picture how it would consistently lift the inside rear tire on tight/hard turns.

Pitty, the stars never aligned to get one.
When I was young, 18,19, when you get DL in EUrope, we did bunch of illegal races late at night, early mornings. There was this one curve that was fairly long turning left, but the grade was to the right. We called it the "Audi" curve because it was always Audi or VW that would end up hugging the tree because of understeer. VW GTI's were really good going through it. But anything VR6, oh boy.
 
All Golf derivatives used to lift the rear wheel interior to the curve in spirited driving, it was a signature move.

The French automotive reporters have a verbiage for everything, they called this "...Lever la patte...". To lift the paw. Like dogs do, when they do certain things.

I think this only disappeared with the Audi A3 and whatever generation Golf it spawned from. I could be wrong.
 
All Golf derivatives used to lift the rear wheel interior to the curve in spirited driving, it was a signature move.

The French automotive reporters have a verbiage for everything, they called this "...Lever la patte...". To lift the paw. Like dogs do, when they do certain things.

I think this only disappeared with the Audi A3 and whatever generation Golf it spawned from. I could be wrong.

Yeah - our 77 rabbit mentioned above did that too. I think it started with that architecture. There were a couple times I’m pretty sure he got both wheels on one side up, 90degree turns into traffic off camber, engine revving freely.
 
Ditto :)

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Funilly enough, this is probably the most anti-dynamic stance in a car. On all such pics it looks like it's sitting still by an invisible tree.

PS: And after re-reading the comment under the red one - it turns out it's a G60. This thing did exist. Oh My.
 
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