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"This article originally appeared in the November 1982 issue of Road &amp;amp;amp; Track.  \u00ADDepressed? Feeling low? If you&amp;#039;re a car enthusiast, we may have the cure for your ills. Get yourself down to your nearest Volkswagen dealer and ask to take a test drive in the new Rabbit GTI, then call your loved ones and tell them you&amp;#039;ll be home in a couple days, because if you&amp;#039;re anything like us, that&amp;#039;s how long it will take you to come back down. What a car! Now, we&amp;#039;ve been fortunate enough to drive VW&amp;#039;s Golf (Rabbit) GTI in Germany and have always come away with sensory imbalance\u2014how can a car that looks like a Rabbit go so quickly? Then we heard an American Rabbit GTI was on the way and we feared a watered-down version with fancy trim, fancy wheels and tires, but surely no performance. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The US Rabbit GTI team, headed by VW of America&amp;#039;s Vice President for Engineering Duane Miller, has come up with a car that is the panacea for everything from the blues to the blahs.  At the press preview for the GTI, Miller explained that the initial plan was to build a more modest version of the car, adding only sport seats and &amp;quot;GTI-like&amp;quot; suspension to the Rabbit S. But it immediately became apparent that the S with the GTI suspension was a disappointment because the US Rabbit weighs more than the European Golf\u2014so the improved handling made the relative lack of horsepower seem worse than it was.  Miller says two events in Germany in 1981 made the US GTI a possibility: first, the introduction of 14-inch alloy wheels for the Quantum that would also fit the Rabbit; second, a decision to develop a federalized version of the 1.8-liter high performance engine slotted for the 1983 Golf GTI. With the more powerful engine and the ability to use larger and wider wheels and tires, the engineers at VW of America felt they had the necessary ingredients to make their own GTI.  The suspension is as similar to the Golf GTI as possible, bearing in mind a weight difference of 140-200 lbs. To handle the extra weight of the Rabbit, the front spring rate was made 22 percent stiffer than the Golf&amp;#039;s (or the 1982 Rabbit&amp;#039;s), and the rear springs were changed from progressive to linear\u2014while their rate is the same as the Golf&amp;#039;s, they are 29 percent stiffer than those of this year&amp;#039;s Rabbit. Shock absorber control was also increased, and the front MacPherson struts are from the Golf GTI and give two-thirds more rebound control than stock equipment. The rear shocks are similar to those of the European GTI, but they have stiffer valving designed specifically for the American GTI. READ THIS: First drive of the 2015 Volkswagen GTI  The final touches for the Rabbit GTI were anti-roll bars front\u2028 and rear (16.5 mm and 20.5 mm, respectively) to minimize body\u2028 roll during cornering, and the largest tires/wheels ever offered \u2028on a Rabbit or Golf: 185/60HR-14 Pirelli P6s mounted on 14x\u20286-inch alloy rims. Miller claims the result is a suspension system that stresses balance above all else: &amp;quot;We believe it to be an exceptional combination of low-speed responsiveness and high-\u00ADspeed stability, of strong linear-range handling and &amp;#039;forgiving&amp;#039; limit behavior. All with a ride quality that never interferes with the car&amp;#039;s ability to double as a family sedan.&amp;quot; An impressive declaration to be sure, especially in light of the current Rabbit&amp;#039;s strong understeer and overall lack of crispness.  The new engine is actually the old engine with some modifications. The 1982 Rabbit&amp;#039;s engine displaces 1715cc and boasts 74 hp (SAE net) at 5000 rpm, with 94 lb-ft of torque at 3000. The GTI powerplant has a larger bore (81.0 mm versus 79.5) to bump the displacement to 1780cc. The cylinder head has been redesigned with larger intake and exhaust valves, and the pistons are 20 percent lighter. The compression ratio is 8.5:1 for the GTI compared to 8.2:1 for the standard car, and the result is a horsepower figure of 90 at 5500 rpm, and the torque is 105 lb-ft at 3250. VW continues to use K-Jetronic fuel injection for the new engine, along with an electronic ignition and a digital idle stabilizer to ensure excellent driveability. Adding to the engine&amp;#039;s performance is an all-new free-flow exhaust system with large-diameter tubing and reengineered converter and muffler baffling to provide a 35 percent reduction in back pressure compared to that of the standard Rabbit.  VW has also tailored a five-speed close-ratio gearbox to the GTI&amp;#039;s performance capabilities, and there&amp;#039;s a heavy-duty clutch to go with it. The final drive ratio is 3.94:1 in the GTI versus 3.89:1 in the 1982 Rabbit. The front brake discs are now vented rather than solid on this special model. Exterior changes include a flexible urethane front air dam that ties into the front fender flares, extensive use of flat-black trim all around the car, and red grille border and red GTI nameplates. Otherwise, the GTI is a sleeper, virtually indistinguishable from any other Rabbit at a distance.  Inside, the GTI has some appropriate features that make it a serious driver&amp;#039;s car. The sport seats are &amp;quot;functional duplicates&amp;quot; of German GTI seats, and the foam padding is imported because VW of America couldn&amp;#039;t find a supplier with acceptable material here. There is a new 4-spoke padded steering wheel that offers excellent grip, and a tachometer and center console with additional gauges are standard. The GTI package also includes halogen headlights, left and right remote-control mirrors, the distinctive golf ball-style shift knob and rear wiper/washer.   Now that you have all the background on what makes the Rabbit GTI different, let us tell you what really makes it different\u2014the driving. Plain and simple, go-for-it fun, and we mean FUN! &amp;quot;One quick trip around the block and you won&amp;#039;t want to give this one up,&amp;quot; enthused one of our editors, while another described the GTI as a &amp;quot;basic pocket-rocket street racer carried to subtle limits . . . The fun quotient in this sleeper is maximum!&amp;quot; And perhaps the most telling comment from one of us (keeping in mind that we each drive 80 to 100 different cars per year): &amp;quot;Here&amp;#039;s a car I would actually buy with my own money.&amp;quot;  And what performance would we be buying? How about 10.6 seconds for 0-60 mph? Or a quarter-mile time of 17.7 seconds at 76.0 mph? For a 2200-lb car with a 1.8-liter engine, this is performance that gives grown men and women toothy smiles and enormous grins. The last Rabbit we tested (&amp;quot;Four Front-Wheel- Drive Sedans,&amp;quot; February 1981) was the quickest car in that comparison test with a 0-60 mph time of 12.6 seconds and a quarter-mile run of 18.7 seconds at 71.0 mph (the other three cars were a Ford Escort, Honda Accord, and Mazda GLC). At 10.6 seconds for 0-60, the Rabbit GTI will put a lot of more expensive cars to shame\u2014such as the Audi Coupe (11.2) or the BMW 320i (11.1), as well as running a very close second to a Saab 900 Turbo (10.0).  But straight-line acceleration is only part of the GTl&amp;#039;s balanced performance story, because the handling capabilities may impress you even more than the power. Its road manners are so damned impressive that we just couldn&amp;#039;t drive the car enough\u2014any excuse to jump in it and hit the pavement and we took it. On the objective side, we measured a lateral acceleration of 0.797g and ran through our 700-foot slalom at 61.3 mph\u2014for comparison, we measured the Porsche 911 SC (May 1980) at 0.798g on the skidpad and 59.7 mph in the slalom. READ THIS: It&amp;#039;s Volkswagen GTI versus GTD in an autobahn throwdown  VW&amp;#039;s Rabbit GTI is so much more than just a track car, though. It&amp;#039;s a car built and bred for twisty mountain roads and city streets: &amp;quot;It corners like you won&amp;#039;t believe with none of the tipsy feel of recent Rabbits,&amp;quot; noted one driver following a high\u00AD-speed mountain run. He added that equally impressive is the suspension&amp;#039;s marvelous compliance that produces smooth ride characteristics to go with the crisp handling. The rack-and-pinion steering is unboosted and while slightly heavy at very low speeds, none of our drivers would care to change it at all. Feedback from the Pirelli P6 tires is excellent and the combination of steering and tires gives the driver an extremely precise feel for what is happening at the road. The close-ratio five-speed makes you feel like you&amp;#039;re driving a Formula Ford on the road. No matter what gear you&amp;#039;re in, you&amp;#039;re never at a loss for torque.  The sport seats, as VW likes to call them, are marvelously comfortable for nearly any person of any size, and they provide excellent lateral support during all the high-speed cornering every driver is going to be doing with this car. Otherwise, the interior is recognizably American Rabbit with the heavily-padded vinyl dash and generally tasteful trim treatment. One criticism we have to level: Without the optional air conditioning, there are no fresh air vents in the center part of the dash, and that&amp;#039;s tacky. We also thought that the sun visors and headliner fabric look rather cheap, but all in all the color coordination and level of quality are quite good.  Well, we could go on for days singing the praises of the Rabbit GTI, but if you fancy yourself some kind of car enthusiast and hot-shoe driver, you&amp;#039;re probably already on the way to the nearest VW dealer. If not, you better hurry. Manufacturing limits on the new 1.8 engine will restrict US GTI production to 20,000 cars per year, and they should sell like lemonade in August. At an estimated price of $8500, the Rabbit GTI is the most exciting automotive news of the year. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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