You Can Go Home Again, But It's Expensive Now

Someone in one of the internet communities of which I am a part started a thread about the car that got away, the one you wish you still had. Anytime a discussion like this starts, I think immediately of my first car, my 1981 VW Scirocco (interestingly, the Probe I sold two years ago, as much as I really, really liked it, doesn't even enter my brain in these kinds of discussions. At least, not yet). Like all Sciroccos, it was a VW Golf/Rabbit underneath the cool, wedgy body designed by the famed Giugiaro, and built by Karmann. It was light, quick, very economical, and could carry a truly amazing amount of stuff. It got me through my first three years of college until it was unceremoniously totaled by someone running a red light. It is because the car was suddenly and unexpectedly taken from me, I believe, that I still carry a torch for it today.

I have sometimes thought, in idle moments, how much fun it would be to buy another one just like it for old time's sake, since one would think that they could be bought for pocket change by now. I have discovered that there are several problems with this theory. One, Mark I Sciroccos are very scare, and are so old that they rarely show up on the typical car sales sites. Two, the car I had was, apparently, somewhat unique in its equipment, in that it was the last year of production and had particular VW alloy wheels that I haven't seen anywhere. Three, the few nice examples are now going for far more than what you can dig up from the sofa cushions, and considerably more than I paid when the car was but seven years old.

But then, I find something like this:



Every mechanical bit of consequence has been rebuilt, and it has the neat GTI wheels, somethat that I eventually would have done with my car if I had kept it long enough to have a real job to pay for them. Still, $2,500 for a 26-year-old small car means that you really have to love one of these. Those that do are salivating over this one.

Then there's this:



It may not look like much, but it is actually a brand new 1981 VW Scirocco. It reportedly has less than 900 miles on the clock, and other pictures verify that it has no wear on it at all. The owner is asking $20,000 (!), but has also approached VW to see whether the company would like to buy this pristine example back. Again, aficionados of the model are falling all over themselves -- this is a modern VW update of the classic story of the treasured car found in the back of a barn, locked in a time warp.

I'm sure if I ever found a nice Scirocco, even to look at it for an afternoon, I would find that its lack of power and creature comforts would bother me far more than they did back then. But I'd like the chance to find out.