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!

  • ToolGuy "Honey, someone is trying to cross the moat again"
  • Rochester "better than Vinfast" is a pretty low bar.
  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
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