Volkswagen Cabriolet

“This is a Cabriolet, man! That’s Hungarian for fast car!” – Bradley, Thrashin’ (1986)

It may have been Hungarian for ‘fast car’ (or not… it’s really just French for ‘convertible’), but Cabriolet could have just as easy been English for ‘chick-mobile’ in the 80s.

Let’s recall 1988’s License to Drive. What’s the car that smokin’ hot Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham) is first seen in? A white Volkswagen Cabriolet.

A year earlier, we watched as Cindy Mancini pulled into her driveway in 1987’s Can’t Buy Me Love. Her car? A white Volkswagen Cabriolet.

We could go on and on. Moonlighting, Miami Vice, Nightmare on Elm Street 4… The Cabriolet was even used as a punchline in 2000’s Scary Movie and 2002’s The Hot Chick.

Yes, these cute little cars were all over the place in our favorite decade, and if you didn’t have one, well… thank heavens your best friend did.

Officially it was a Volkswagen Golf Mk1 Cabriolet, and it hit the streets in 1979. At first they were kinda ugly, coming in blah colors like dark green and dark blue, but then some genius at Volkswagen had an idea: make ’em available in white, and market ’em to the teenage girls of the world. (Really, what daddy is gonna say ‘no’ to his princess when she asks for such a -comparatively- cheap car. If she was lucky, daddy had a Beetle convertible when he was young, and she could play that card, too.)

By 1993, VW moved on and completely redesigned the Cabriolet… perhaps after realizing (finally) that the 80s were over. These days you can still have daddy take you to the dealer for a VW Cabriolet, but any resemblance to any actual car from the 80s is purely coincidental.

Frankly, we’re glad today’s model doesn’t look anything like the original. It just makes the original 80s chick-mobile that much more classic.

Beep beep.

We ♥ the Volkswagen Cabriolet.

~ by weheart80s on June 24, 2011.