Volkswagen Cabriolet

Volkswagen’s Cabriolet convertible is a cute, lovable car that is fun to look at and drive – if you don’t mind a dated design.
The low-tech Cabriolet has been sold in the United States since 1980 and is derived from the long-gone Volkswagen Rabbit.
Not for the Cabriolet are the nice roadability and sophisticated 16-valve engines of VW’s Golf models.
And, cute though it is, whoever designed the Cabriolet’s body seemingly never heard of aerodynamics.
The Cabriolet comes from a simpler auto era, when lots of wind noise with the top up or down was par for the course.
Seating in the rear is so cramped that area is best left to supple teenagers. And the trunk is laughably tiny, with a small opening for loading cargo.

No matter. Until Mazda’s sexy Miata recently came along, the Cabriolet was the No. 1 wish-list car of wealthy teenage girls with nicknames such as “Muffy” in affluent suburbs throughout the country.
The Cabriolet still ranks high on their wish lists. And, with the Miata in short supply and nearly impossible to buy without being terribly price gouged, the Cabriolet is lots easier to get.

VW says most Cabriolet drivers are women. It says the top-line Cabriolet Boutique model, with its white interior, white body and white top, is particularly appealing to ladies.

Cabriolet prices make the car just expensive enough to be regarded as a toy by regular working folks but inexpensive enough for wealthy mommies and daddies to purchase for a daughter keeping her high school or college grades up.

And, as long as the front-wheel-drive car is fun to drive, who cares if its small, 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine puts out only 90 horsepower?
The Cabriolet does 0-60 m.p.h. in about 12 seconds. That’s reasonably quick, but leisurely for an auto with a sporting personality in today’s day and age.
Tack on two seconds if the car has an automatic transmission.
Clutch action is nice. But a driver must contend with a five-speed manual transmission shifter that gets balky during quick shifting.

The Cabriolet’s vertically adjustable, front-pivoting driver’s seat causes even drivers with long arms to reach too far to engage third and fifth gears.
Fuel economy isn’t too hot because the 94.5-inch-wheelbase Cabriolet is hefty for its size at about 2,300 pounds.
Figure on averaging in the low 20-m.p.g. area.
Handling is good enough for the Muffys of this world, who seem to like to use the car for top-down, straight-line cruising on sunny summer days and dreamy summer nights.

But car buffs attracted to the car will notice the steering, while quick enough, is too light and lacks sufficient road feel. They also might note that the Cabriolet’s dated chassis causes handling to be behind the times, although the car is stable.
Disc brakes are found up front, but old-fashioned drum brakes are at the rear. Still, power brakes are standard, and stopping power ability is decent.

Cabriolet has few typical convertible shakes and rattles. A built-in roll bar stiffens the body structure for fewer squeaks and adds to the car’s safety.
VW did a neat job with the top. It is nicely designed and fitted and has an inner liner. It’s not a power top, but is easy to put down or up.
The radio is nicely placed, but the car’s auxiliary gauges are way down near the floor and thus are difficult to read quickly.
Despite its faults, the Cabriolet is a real charmer, one of those few cars whose owner will wish it was not gone after it has been sold.

The Cabriolet Boutique zips along reasonably well under the weight of only two adult occupants; but it seems to develop a case of the slows when two more full-sized bodies are put in the rear seats.
Also, despite VW’s use of structural reinforcements to keep this convertible’s body rigid, it flexes and shimmies noticeably on less-than-smooth roads.
Overall design and execution, particularly in the passenger cabin. Unlike most four-seat convertibles and sports cars, the rear seats in the Cabriolet Boutique are real. There were absolutely no leg-room complaints from back-seat riders.

The Volkswagen Cabrio gives the Dodge Neon a definite run for its m oney in the Cuteness Category.

Especially with the top down, the little front-wheel-drive soft top mechanic al munchkin gets all kinds of praise from passers-by. Particularly women.

Just one problem: What price cuteness? We have before us a vehicle whose primary appeal is that soft top and those soft looks. But it’s also a vehicle with adequate acceleration at best (stick sh ift, that is – with the $875 optional automatic, you might get crushed by the o dd Mack truck coming up astern).

And, it’s a vehicle with a somewhat schizoid approach to ergonomics, and one with a fair amount of interior room but a tiny trunk.

Granted, the Cabrio is a pleasant, quirky little car with a nice, smooth rid e and almost no squat or dive characteristics. Steering is light and quick. Brak es, with standard ABS, are good. Safety equipment is pretty politically correct. But…

But if all you wanted was a nice convertible cruiser, you owe it to yourself to check out such rigs as the $22,595 Ford Mustang GT and the $23,095 Chevrolet Camaro Z28. Unlike the Cabrio, they come with power-assisted tops. And they can light up their rear tires and suck the doors off the Cabrio at any stoplight.

True, they may be an also-ran in the Cuteness Grand Prix. And cuteness has to count for something these days, especially with many hig h-performance two-seaters biting the extinction dust in favor of less-expensive, less-powerful cute cruisers.

Well, Volkswagen sure hopes cuteness counts. The company’s been ripped by ru mors of a possible pullout from the North American market, shrinking sales and s erious job cuts. So, it really needs the Cabrio to do some serious selling.

The Cabrio (short for cabriolet, a pretentious word for convertible that use d to designate this model) is the latest in a 40-year run of convertible offspri ng coming from Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg, Germany, headquarters. In 1955, there was a ragtop Beetle, followed by the Karmann Ghia, Rabbit Convertible and the Cabri olet.

It begins life as a Golf III, with one difference. Golf hardtops for us are assembled in Mexico. Golfs destined for decapitation begin life in Wolfsburg, th en get shipped to Osnabruck where it gets its convertectomy by the Karmann Coach works. The operation also includes extra fortifying of the bulkhead, dash and fl oor and throwing in a super-strong roll bar for more structural rigidity and rol lover safety.

Then, we get to the top. It is a quality piece of equipment, six layers thick and featuring a real gl ass rear window with a real printed-circuit rear defroster. It has an outside la yer of nature-resisting PVC-coated vinyl and the rest of the layered approach gi ves good heat and cold-insulating properties.

It looks and feels a lot more expensive on close inspection. But erected, it requires judicious use of your side mirrors. Rear and three-quarter rear visibi lity is far from the best.
Manual operation of the top is plenty easy. Just snap the two quick-release levers on the windshield header and push the top back. That’s it. If you want to look cool, snap the tonneau on to hide the folded top.

Open or closed, the Cabrio cabin is pretty roomy and pretty comfortable. VW has long built really good front buckets. They’ve called them “sport seats.” I c all them Generic Recaros. Instruments, controls and climate vents are well-place d, even if they have a slightly ’70s look to them.
There are driver and passenger airbags, long in the designing and making and finally here. You have to wonder why, if they took so long to get here, the dri ver’s airbag doesn’t allow use of the whole steering wheel hub for the horn (lik e several other manufacturers’ products do) and why the passenger-side airbag ha s eliminated the glovebox (unlike some of the competition).

You also have to wonder who designed the inevitable All-American cupholders. These two live almost directly under the ashtray, meaning you might get a small coffee from Wawa or 7-Eleven in there (although it may be tilted precariously), but a Burger King Medium Coke? Fahgeddaboudit.

The Cabrio’s 115-horsepower engine delivers 10-plus-second, 0-60 acceleratio n, with the standard five-speed. Stick with the stick, if you can. Real-world mi leage on regular fuel is mid-20s.
You could look at the Cabrio as the lower of a three-tiered offering of Germ an convertibles, with the Audi Cabriolet on the top and the BMW 318i convertible in the middle.

All are lookers, handlers, built on an extremely rigid chassis with almost no cowl or body flex, and of top-shelf construction and materials.