Hate VWs? Oh well, this is our wish list. Santa, I know we just demanded you bring us that killer Camaro Funny Car an hour ago, but we’re not done yet. We need something that can turn and stop too. We’ll go easy on you with this one and do it on the cheap with a car that can run in the SCCA’s cool, Improved Touring class. It’s an ’87 VW Rabbit and it’ll do the job just swell.

We’ve got a few years of experience competing with a VW in the Improved Touring class, so the ad for this car on RacingJunk car caught our eye and tugged on our heart strings. Improved Touring is a great class to use as an introductory road racing experience because costs are pretty low (racing is never cheap, but IT keeps it manageable), racing is always tight, and there are lots of others out there feeling their way around as well.

For $3,500, this GTI is a running and driving race car that could hit the track this weekend. It comes with a couple sets of wheels and a suspension setup that is worth all of the $3,500 and probably some more.

You can hate on little VWs all you want, but until you actually get one out on a race track and drive it as hard as you can in traffic with about 20 other cars and the little bastard keeps asking for more, you’ve got no standing to dump on them.