Which Little German Runabout Would You Pick? 1988 VW Polo vs 1997 Opel Astra

Willkommen bei Scheißebox Showdown! For your entertainment today, I have found two cheap(ish) and cheerful little cars on Mobile.de, Germany’s self-proclaimed largest online vehicle marketplace. They’re both old enough to import, if you took a shine to one of them.

For yesterday’s Showdown, we were visiting our neighbor to the north to check out two familiar-but-different vehicles. It was no contest: the ruggedly handsome old Mercury pickup won by a landslide. I’m not surprised. That little Acura is basically just Honda’s version of a Cadillac Cimarron. (You know I’m right.)

I’d take the truck too, for what it’s worth, though I’m generally not a Ford truck guy. But you could bring that truck down here to the States, do a little mechanical work on it, and sell it for a tidy profit, I’m sure. I’ve seen rougher trucks that age go for twice as much in recent years.

I’m not sure the concept of a true “shitbox” exists in Germany. Sure, you can get old cheap cars, but registering them requires a TÜV inspection, and as we know, getting an older vehicle through that gauntlet is no mean feat. There’s no way you would ever see something even as rough as my old Chevy, which runs and drives just fine and is as safe as I can make it, on German roads. They’d find some little thing, or a dozen little things, to ding it for. The other side of that, of course, is that if you’re shopping for a car to bring over here, a German car with a current TÜV inspection should be a fairly safe bet. Let’s check out a couple of fun options I found for not much money.

1988 Volkswagen Polo GL – €1,950

Engine/drivetrain: 1.3-liter OHC inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD

Location: Ingolstadt, Germany

Odometer reading: 50,000 kilometers

Operational status: Runs and drives “flawlessly”

Volkswagen’s “small” cars here in the US have never been all that tiny, really. A Beetle or a Rabbit is a small car, but it dwarfs something like an original Mini or a Smart. The Golf has grown considerably over the years, and Volkswagen now sells two cars smaller than the Golf in its home country. This was the first, the Polo, introduced in 1975. Our example here is a Mk2 Polo, in the “Steilheck,” or “steep tail,” bodystyle. We’d call it a wagon – or, if you really want to get fancy, since it’s a two-door, you could call it a “shooting brake.”

As you can see from the dashboard, which should look very familiar to anyone who has driven an ’80s VW, this car hardly has any mileage (kilometrage?) on it at all. 50,500 kilometers is only about 32,000 miles. It’s powered by a 1.3-liter four-cylinder making 54 horsepower, which, believe it or not, is the largest engine available. This car weighs next to nothing, though, so it’s not as bad as it sounds. It runs and drives “flawlessly” and has been “very well maintained,” according to the dealership selling it.

It’s pretty Spartan inside, which is what you’d expect from an economy car from the ’80s, but someone has replaced the front seats with seats from a fancier VW, and they have a really cool pattern on the fabric. There’s an ill-fitting aftermarket stereo in the dash, too; I guess some cheap-car things are universal.

It’s faded and tired-looking on the outside; I’m guessing this car has never seen the inside of a garage. I’ve seen this color on a lot of Golfs and Foxes here in the US, and it almost always looks slightly dull like this. If it’s like my old dark blue Golf, though, it’s a single-stage paint so it should shine back up with a little elbow grease. There’s no rust on it, at least, and the only damage I see is a little wrinkle in the tailgate.

1997 Opel Astra converted to a ute – €4,000

Engine/drivetrain: 1.6-liter OHC inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD

Location: Worms, Germany

Odometer reading: 197,000 kilometers

Operational status: Runs and drives well

We’ve all seen pickup trucks made from station wagons before. Hell, there are companies who have turned such conversions into a business. Plenty of backyard engineers have done their own conversions over the years, too, of course. But it’s not the sort of thing I would have expected to find for sale in Germany. This first-generation Opel Astra probably started out as a two-door panel van, but it now sports a pickup bed with a fancy diamond-plate cover.

Power for this unlikely contraption comes from a 1.6-liter overhead cam four and a five-speed manual transmission. It’s related to the engine used in the miserable excuse for a Pontiac LeMans sold here in the US in the late ’80s and early ’90s. But don’t hold that against it; it’s actually a pretty good engine. This one has almost 200,000 kilometers on it, and I’d be curious to know how many of those were acquired after the truck conversion. It must run and drive fine, if the seller is offering test drives, right?

It’s in good shape inside, though of course it ends abruptly behind the seats. At least the new back wall of the cab is nicely finished. This one has a janky aftermarket stereo in the dash as well, but the stock Blaupunkt tape deck is still there. Maybe it could be hooked back up. Then you just have to find a Kraftwerk cassette somewhere.

The conversion looks pretty well done, actually, but then I guess it would have to be to satisfy the inspectors. It looks like there might be a little rust starting along the rocker panels, but it can’t be too serious yet. The graphics suit it well, but I don’t think this vehicle needs any extra attention drawn to itself.

If you were going to actually import a car from Germany, I’m guessing these two would be pretty far down your list. But you have to admit, they’re right up our alley. One is a humble economy car that’s barely broken in, and the other is a former delivery van that’s been turned into an unlikely pickup truck. Assuming these were your only two choices, which one would you put on a boat and bring over?