Used Car of the Day: 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI

by Tim Healey

Published: February 27th, 2023

used car of the day 1983 volkswagen rabbit gti

Today we're featuring a car entering its fourth decade of life -- and apparently, it's still in decent shape. Not everyone who is in their 40s can say that.

This 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI is on sale for $7,200 and has about 130K miles -- the odometer is broken.

It's a manual-transmission car, and the seller says it runs well and has only limited rust issues. It also needs some windshield, upholstery, and interior trim parts. The seller has replaced/maintained a long list of factory parts and has also gone deep into the aftermarket.

The A/C has been deleted, though the parts remain.

Give it a look-see here.

[Images: Seller]

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Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

More by Tim Healey

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2 of 26 comments

Golden2husky on Feb 28, 2023

My first car that had sporting pretensions...my brother lent me his '84 GTI (black of course) when he was out of the country for a few months. Wasn't particularly fast, but compared to my Fury that I drove during that time, is felt like a slot car. Nice shift as well. I had to have it repaired several times in those months. Stereo was stolen too. The scum broke in by jamming something under the driver door handle. Apparently that was a design defect that thieves figured out pretty quickly.

1 Reply
Mikedt on Mar 01, 2023

Would love to have one of these in rust free condition. Crisp clean lines, snappy handling and acres of glass to see out of. The perfect "more fun to drive a slow car fast, than a fast car slow".

My first car was a Sirocco from the same era. It unfortunately was already starting to rust.

1 Reply

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