Having a German car shop in California for 20 years and a hoard of children I need a source of safe inexpensive cars, not only for the kids but for me too. Operating a body shop also influenced what I believed were the strongest safest cars. The VW Rabbit/Golf proved to be structurally safe and extremely reliable and inexpensive to operate. From the Diesel power cars that got incredible fuel milage, to the great performance and handling of the Scirocco and the GTI and the style of the Cabriolet and Jetta, the perfect sporty family car of the time. All of the first generation cars proved their worth in safety, longevity and in racing. I cannot remember when we did not have at least half dozen we owned. we still kept them around when we graduated the kids to Audis, Porsches and Mercedes. I even campaigned a Jetta in NASA racing, the ultimate rain car and I did extremely well with it in the 1/2 mile oval at Altamont. The durability of these cars is legendary, our 1978 Scirocco S was our first and we kept it until 1994 when sold it to one of my techs when it had 280,000 miles in 1997. when I last spoke to him in 2004 the car was at 480,000 miles. The 1.6 liter engine was still going strong..