So you want a pickup truck, but all the modern half-tons are just too big. Even the little ones, the Rangers and Colorados and Tacomas, are so tall and squared-off and aggressive — it’s all too much. No, if you’re in the market for a compact and practical stuff-hauler, then you need this: A 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit pickup with a Ford V8, a rollcage, and a fuel cell. There is no more practical vehicle than this.
This Rabbit was actually once featured on Speedhunters, back in the halcyon days of 2014. Back then it had a handmade widebody kit and black Ford Racing Cobra R wheels, but the car as it sits on Facebook Marketplace today has changed. Now it wears unpainted Berg Cup wide fenders and bottlecap-style wheels, but the heart of the Rabbit is still the same: A stripped-out and custom-caged shell with a 5.4-liter Triton V8 up front that sends power to a welded diff out back.
It’s seen some years
The Rabbit on Marketplace is, without question, in rougher shape than when it was built 11 years ago. It’s dusty, it’s missing headlights, the body kit seems unmounted — it’s no longer the daily driver it was back in 2014. But you could restore it to that former glory, put the plexiglass windows back into their door slots and freshen up the almost certainly out-of-date Takata harnesses. You could bring this V8 drift Rabbit back to the streets.
If you need a small pickup, this is it. Never mind that the bed is full of suspension components, rollcage bars, and a fuel cell — and that it lacks such modern truck bed amenities as “a floor.” Just think about the noise this engine makes, the way it’ll throw your head against the headrests of those Bride seats, and all the good times you’ll have in a properly-sized pickup. Who says that getting a compact truck means you have to sacrifice displacement?
