Junkyard Find: 1980 Volkswagen Dasher Diesel
The original Volkswagen Passat, which was essentially an Audi 80, was sold in the United States as the Dasher. We saw this two-door diesel Dasher at a Northern California wrecking yard last year, then this first-cousin gasoline-burning ’75 Audi Fox a couple months back, and now we’re heading back to California for a super-rare four-door diesel Dasher.
This car was slow even by generous 1980 standards, but diesel fuel economy must have made diesel VW buyers feel smart. I took my driver-training classes in a Rabbit Diesel, and I’m pretty sure the top speed of that car was about 52 mph.
This car appears to have been driven down from Alaska, judging from the body rust, moss growing on the trim, and these parking stickers.
The interior is packed with damp Alaska Airlines aircraft shop manuals, probably a couple hundred pounds of them.
I’m sure I could have picked up a Boeing manual for cheap or even free, but I decided that I’d be able to live without it.
Was it still running when it got scrapped? Who can say?
It’s hard to use up a car this thoroughly.
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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In different counties, the Passat also called Carat, Corsar, Dasher, Magotan. From outside, the used Volkswagen Passat does not look like other German cars.
Gah, my grandpa brought one of those back from Germany. Aviators must have a thing for them because he was a pilot. I remember it smelling "like a german car". It broke a lot, but it hung around for 20 years and probably 400k mi on at least 3 engines before my aunt pawned it. We'd borrow it when on vacation to see him in San Diego. My biggest memories of those vacations were sitting under an underpass in the desert waiting for a tow truck, and getting a bump start at Disney Land from a Japanese Micro truck. Also LA traffic.