The great Scirocco / Cabriolet Swap

Okay, so technically I didn't actually purchase the Cabriolet. I traded my 1987 Scirocco for it. As with all of my vehicles, how the Cabriolet came into my posession has an interesting story. "Of course it does" Kellie says; "you can't just buy a car."

Last fall I finally got behind the wheel of another MK1 vw, the 16v rocco I picked up for $500 with the intent to gut to make a 16v rabbit.. well, it turned out the rocco was too nice to tear apart so I cleaned it up a bit and did some work on it and drove it around and to some shows this summer and had fun with it, but it didn't seem quite as fun as my rabbit was... It wasn't a vehicle we could enjoy as a family. We really missed the convertible on those nice sunny days.

This past summer Cristine and William (some friends of ours in the Atlanta area we know from metting up at VW shows, vwvortex and toplessrabbit) came across a nice '92 wolfsburg that her co-worker had and I was going to sell my Jetta to buy it. I sent some feelers out and even detailed it to get it ready to put up for sale. As my interest in R/C airplanes began to overshadow the whole Volkswagen situation, I pretty much decided I needed something bigger, not something smaller. I decided to pass on the dealand our friends wound up buying it to save it from great peril; which was nice. I wound up keeping my jetta and buying a fix'r'upper vanagon westfalia instead. (larger... yes)

Later in the fall when it was perfect convertible weather I found myself wishing I was in the scirocco when I was in my jetta, and wishing I was in a convertible when I was in the rocco. I discussed the situation with my wife and decided that if I was going to have one show/toy car, I wanted it to be a cab... so the plan was to make the rabbit diesel the mpg saver daily driver, and sell the rocco and jetta to buy a nice late model cabriolet.

I discussed this with Cristine one evening, and she immediately suggested trading her "extra" '92 for my scirocco. I pondered it for about a week or two, and the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. This must have been a little before december, IIRC. Anyway... after about 100 IMs we decided to check out eachother's vehicles (mainly me checking out the cab since they had already seen the rocco at several shows) after the busy holiday season... my birthday was mid Jan (16th) so I thought it would be cool to do it around then... turns out, their local vw club was having a GTG that weekend, so the date was set.

I drove the Scirocco down to their place and checked out the car. I admit it took about a day for the cab to win me over. I wasn't quite feeling it quite right, but after a short drive thru town I was positive I wanted to make the trade. It just felt right. I had Cristine drive the Scirocco around a bit and when everyone was happy, the papers were signed and I headed home with my new toy.