Junkyard Find: 1986 Volkswagen Scirocco
The MkII Scirocco never was considered as mainstream cool in North America as it was in Europe, but a fair number of the things still made it to these shores. Nowadays, of course, many months can go by between MkII Scirocco street sightings. In California junkyards, however, it’s still possible to find Sciroccos in high-turnover wrecking yards. Here’s one that I spotted in the San Francisco Bay Area a few weeks ago.
By 1986, VW was having a tough time competing with the Japanese for the hearts of West Coast buyers of sport compacts, and Chrysler was siphoning away a lot of the remaining shoppers with their inexpensive turbocharged machinery.
This one is a run-of-the-mill 8-valve model, no doubt used as a gas-sipping commuter.
Not quite 200,000 miles, but respectable for a 1980s car.
The Scirocco was one of the better-looking machines of its era, which explains this zero-information advertisement for the ’86.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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Even then, I and several others in the local group were bitching about updated automobiles becoming heavier than their predecessors. Most of the island faithful remained with their Mark I Sciroccos, although one of them eventually ordered the twincam and one of everything from the Oettinger catalog.
This might be my old car. Makes me sad to see it in this kind of shape! It's definitely a 1986--you can tell by the fact that it has the third brake light at the top of the back window (a feature that wasn't included on the CA model '85s). I donated mine to Father Joe's Villages in San Diego back in 1999, when it had just over 100K miles on it. Wish I had never gotten rid of it, now. Morbidly curious which junkyard this one is in if you're able to say. Thanks!