$15,630 - $15,474. The Volkswagen Golf (Mark 1 and Mark 5 badged as Volkswagen Rabbit in North America) is a compact car / small family car manufactured by Volkswagen. The front-wheel drive Golf was Volkswagen's first successful replacement for the air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle.
Introduced in the mid-1970s, when Americans' attention turned to small, fuel-efficient cars, the Volkswagen Rabbit was a hop-away hit. Initially available as either a two- or four-door hatchback, and later on as a convertible and even a pickup truck, the Rabbit combined a nimble, front-wheel-drive chassis with high build quality and incredible space efficiency for a vehicle with such a small footprint. Early print ads even boasted that it had more passenger room than a Rolls-Royce Corniche. This successor to the beloved Beetle easily embarrassed American economy cars of the era that didn't come close to offering the performance, fuel-efficiency or cabin space of the Rabbit. In 1985, the Rabbit nameplate was replaced by the Golf moniker, which was what the car had always been called in Europe.
More than 20 years later, the Rabbit name is back. In a reversal of the 1980s name swap, VW replaced the Golf name with the Rabbit badge on U.S.-bound hatchbacks in mid-2006. Notably, the word "Rabbit" does not appear anywhere on the car; instead, a small chrome bunny cast mid-hop decorates the hatch of Volkswagen's entry-level compact. We're not sure exactly why the cute name was revived, though in all likelihood VW's marketers wanted to stir up some latent nostalgia for this former favorite of small-car fans. The current-generation Volkswagen Rabbit runs with an inline-5, rather than a four-cylinder engine, and although larger and heavier than before, it retains the characteristic boxy but very functional hatchback architecture.
The new VW Rabbit's success is far from assured, however, as much has happened in the North American market in the intervening decades. The leading Japanese manufacturers dominate the economy car segment thanks to popular nameplates that have credibility with younger buyers, while rising Korean automakers are now turning out high-quality small cars that typically have better track records for reliability than past VWs. But the reincarnated Rabbit is a charmer, offering upscale features (such as heated seats and mirror-mounted turn signal repeaters) not usually seen in this segment, as well as that solid feel on the road that seems to be a birthright of German-engineered cars.
Current Volkswagen Rabbit
