Junkyard Find: 1986 Volkswagen Scirocco

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

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
Murilee Martin

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, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Felis Concolor Felis Concolor on Sep 29, 2012

    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.

  • Arajane Arajane on Dec 14, 2017

    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!

  • 3SpeedAutomatic 2012 Ford Escape V6 FWD at 147k miles:Just went thru a heavy maintenance cycle: full brake job with rotors and drums, replace top & bottom radiator hoses, radiator flush, transmission flush, replace valve cover gaskets (still leaks oil, but not as bad as before), & fan belt. Also, #4 fuel injector locked up. About $4.5k spread over 19 months. Sole means of transportation, so don't mind spending the money for reliability. Was going to replace prior to the above maintenance cycle, but COVID screwed up the market ( $4k markup over sticker including $400 for nitrogen in the tires), so bit the bullet. Now serious about replacing, but waiting for used and/or new car prices to fall a bit more. Have my eye on a particular SUV. Last I checked, had a $2.5k discount with great interest rate (better than my CU) for financing. Will keep on driving Escape as long as A/C works. 🚗🚗🚗
  • Rna65689660 For such a flat surface, why not get smoke tint, Rtint or Rvynil. Starts at $8. I used to use a company called Lamin-x, but I think they are gone. Has held up great.
  • Cprescott A cheaper golf cart will not make me more inclined to screw up my life. I can go 500 plus miles on a tank of gas with my 2016 ICE car that is paid off. I get two weeks out of a tank that takes from start to finish less than 10 minutes to refill. At no point with golf cart technology as we know it can they match what my ICE vehicle can do. Hell no. Absolutely never.
  • Cprescott People do silly things to their cars.
  • Jeff This is a step in the right direction with the Murano gaining a 9 speed automatic. Nissan could go a little further and offer a compact pickup and offer hybrids. VoGhost--Nissan has  laid out a new plan to electrify 16 of the 30 vehicles it produces by 2026, with the rest using internal combustion instead. For those of us in North America, the company says it plans to release seven new vehicles in the US and Canada, although it’s not clear how many of those will be some type of EV.Nissan says the US is getting “e-POWER and plug-in hybrid models” — each of those uses a mix of electricity and fuel for power. At the moment, the only all-electric EVs Nissan is producing are the  Ariya SUV and the  perhaps endangered (or  maybe not) Leaf.In 2021, Nissan said it would  make 23 electrified vehicles by 2030, and that 15 of those would be fully electric, rather than some form of hybrid vehicle. It’s hard to say if any of this is a step forward from that plan, because yes, 16 is bigger than 15, but Nissan doesn’t explicitly say how many of those 16 are all-battery, or indeed if any of them are.  https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/25/24111963/nissan-ev-plan-2026-solid-state-batteries
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