By Antti Kautonen
Welcome to our Weekend Edition. I’ll be posting a couple of parking garage sightings this weekend, as I’ve been thawing my car in the Garage of Dreams again. Said garage is the only heated underground parking garage in town, that’s freely open. This means I often park there, and often have a reason to whip out the camera. The weird paintings on the walls add to the surreal tackiness.
This white Volkswagen Caddy is one of the Yugoslavian-built Caddies sold here. It’s in surprisingly nice condition, even if these are most commonly used as cheap haulers and given little care.
The front end of the Caddy has been upgraded with a Mk1 Golf-style Hella four-headlight grille, which does improve the basic looks a little bit. The Caddy here is a diesel model, and since the plate info lets us know it’s a 55kW/75hp version, it probably has a 1.6-litre turbodiesel under the hood. The 1.6 naturally aspirated diesels only had some 44kW/60hp.
The flanks of the Caddy are surprisingly straight and rust free. It’s not always the case with these, even if they have been built with enough care. You can see from the rear corner, how these had to be extended to comply with bed length regulations – the same as with the Subaru pickups.
Even the red lettering on the tailgate is intact. The bed cover is a welcome addition, and a sight commonly seen on these.
[Images: Copyright 2013 Hooniverse/Antti Kautonen]
Jeff Glucker
Nice find. You may have mentioned it earlier but why did the gov't require the extended beds?
If I'm not mistaken, the minimum bed length for a vehicle to be able to be registered as a commercial vehicle (= lower taxes) was 185cm. This was originally conjured due to the smallish Toyota Publica/Timangi pickup being outrageously popular here.
I've been told that the minimum bed length was carefully chosen to be longer than that of Toyota Timangi but definitely shorter than that of Moskvitŝ Elite.
<img src="http://personal.inet.fi/koti/lada-farmi/muuta/autot/021.jpg">
That makes perfect sense.
I can't imagine these have much of a payload, but I bet they're really handy, especially the extra 6 inches on the back.
Extra inches are always welcome! Wait, are we talking about those movies? I got confused at bed length.
I quite frequently see this quite clean Caddy. It's probably owned by someone working for the local VW/Audi dealership.
<img src="http://i8.aijaa.com/b/00917/11754716.jpg" width="600">
I hear they get great fuel mileage.
I had one in high school. perfect truck to mess around in as i wasn't interested in hauling anything