MK1 Cabriolets

My parents are looking at them for a cheap beach/summer car and they have a line on what looks like a pretty decent '87 (I personally prefer that cleaner look over the later "Clipper"-bodied versions).

Anyone have any experience? Seem pretty basic and cheap to fix, besides the top at least. Rust seems pretty prevalent under the windshield on a few he's shown me. Any ideas if/how hard it is to fix that?

Doesn't care about performance. It's just a runabout and beach car that will be full of more sand and surf boards than performance parts.

VW automatic transmissions of that era were problematic. For that reason i would recommend manual only.

Yeah I think stick is the preferred mode of gear shifting. Luckily most of the ones out there seem to be stick.

...has something to do with my user name here.

Bought new as Mrs. BDT's daily, but became a garage queen for most of the 15+ years we owned it. The nicest one in the country has a FMV of $5-6K (ask me how I know). The photo above was 'as sold' with slightly over 50,000 on the clock.

Mechanically they are dead simple VW Rabbits. Later cars had digifant. Due to the cost of the top, not to mention body work, I'd buy the nicest one you can find. You'll be way ahead of trying to fix one up.

The top seals are discontinued and have not been available for 15 years. It is not a matter of if it will leak but how much will it leak.

Other than that I love the cars. I have had 4.

I saw the seals on a few sites. Maybe some of them are and some aren't?

I was able to fiberglass repair the windshield rot on my MKII GTI pretty easily.

Just kicked out the windshield myself, repaired the metal (fiberglass and bondo), painted it, and then had a new windshield installed professionally.

http://www.cabby-info.com/Files/TopSealPartNumbers.pdf

Looks like 5 out of the 25 seals are still available. None of them being the important ones.

Where the top edge and windshield frame meet forms a groove that channels water at speeds above 25mph. It pushes the water to the side of the car, above the vent window and over the door glass where it deposits it on the drivers left knee.

Not trying to dissuade you. I love the cars. Get an 85-87 that came with the JH 1.8, sway bars and 14" alloys and you have a MK1 GTI that weighs an extra 170lbs and has 50 miles of headroom. An 85-87 Wolfsburg edition will have awesome leather versions of the sport seats that I feel are far superior to the US GTI seats.

mk1's that rust under the windshield will lead to electrical problems as the water runs down and corrodes the fuse block.

Also, the terminal failure on these is typically strut tower rust in the front end. Inspect the strut towers carefully.

Sounds like you might be better off with a mk0(bug), at least those typically rust in easy places, and I'd assume you can get all the seals for it aftermarket? Should be even better in the sand.

JohnRW1621 wrote: VW automatic transmissions of that era were problematic. For that reason i would recommend manual only.

Unless the shifter bushings are gone, which they do. I had one of these briefly, and could never find a gear. Flipped it quick, made a few bucks.

We just bought this 2 years ago. 1 owner, garaged, 74k kms (45k miles). We paid premium dollars for it but my wife loves it. Gets great mileage, stays in the garage, so who cares about seals. They are out there and great little cars.

EvanR wrote: Unless the shifter bushings are gone, which they do. I had one of these briefly, and could never find a gear. Flipped it quick, made a few bucks.

You realize the shift bushings are around $20 and an hour job if you take your time, right? I would hate for someone to read this thread and think "sloppy shifting! I better sell the car quick"

This car is a 42k miles Aigner Ettiene edition in burgundy and looks amazing except for a rather large rust hole by the windshield that would require replacing, and some other maintenance bits.

My first thought was that the Aigner Ettiene edition is pretty rare. Some googling brought this result:

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?1671665-Etienne-Aigner-Edition : PRODUCTION NUMBERS: A total of 2951 Etienne Aigner Edition VW Cabriolets were built worldwide. This divides up into: - "Midnight Blue Pearl Effect": 1201 - "Bordeaux Pearl Effect": 752 - "Mangrove Green Metallic": 998 American market figures: - "Midnight Blue Pearl Effect": 422 - "Bordeaux Pearl Effect": 399 - "Mangrove Green Metallic": 639 Total: 1460. 809 of which were manual stick shift, 651 automatic.

Pretty too:

I had a nice red 1990 Cabby for over a year but sold it because I just didn't like the way it drove. They are simple to work on.
Just get the nicest one you can find. I had a rust free car and it cost me about $2k. The top was starting to show its age. I added some sweet Recaro's from a '89 GLI:

Perfect beach day car! The roll bar even give you a way to mount the boards, just run a line around the front of the board and a attach it to the front tow hook...

Thanks for the help guys. My dad spoke with the guy selling it. It has a pretty recent top on it, so that's good. But, it needs: a control arm, axels (both, don't they tend to eat these things?), a new thermostat, and the aforementioned rust spot. But it does have only 42k original miles. I guess it spent most of its life in FL.

JohnRW1621 wrote: My first thought was that the Aigner Ettiene edition is pretty rare. Some googling brought this result:

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?1671665-Etienne-Aigner-Edition : PRODUCTION NUMBERS: A total of 2951 Etienne Aigner Edition VW Cabriolets were built worldwide. This divides up into: - "Midnight Blue Pearl Effect": 1201 - "Bordeaux Pearl Effect": 752 - "Mangrove Green Metallic": 998 American market figures: - "Midnight Blue Pearl Effect": 422 - "Bordeaux Pearl Effect": 399 - "Mangrove Green Metallic": 639 Total: 1460. 809 of which were manual stick shift, 651 automatic.

Pretty too:

Weird, I didnt know they were that rare. I saw a green one in the junkyard once.