From 1978 to 1988, the German manufacturer known as the People’s Car built 9,547 examples of the Type 183 military vehicle. Also known as the Iltis, this little bugger is Volkswagen’s take on the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen and good golly - the one in the photo above found its way to Sacramento County, California.
Listed on Craigslist for a mere $6,000, this Volkswagen Iltis is a 1981 military-specification model. According to Vee-Dub, 8,800 units were manufactured for German forces and 747 units for other uses. The Type 183 was also built under license in Canada by Bombardier Inc. The production totaled approximately 5,173 examples of the breed.
How did VW come to produce such a curious machine? For reasons that don’t really matter, the Iltis project was the brainchild of Audi. The four-wheel drive contraption is based around components from the Audi 100, joined by a 1.7-liter four-cylinder Vee-Dub engine with 75 PS (55 kW or 74 horsepower) on tap.
Fun fact: the four-wheel drive system of the Volkswagen Iltis provided the basis for the Audi Quattro system that debuted in 1980 on the original Audi Quattro. Fun fact number two: Earlier that year, an Audi-prepped VW Iltis managed to cross the line first at the Paris-Dakar Rally.
To thoroughly understand how capable this thing is, we attached a video with a Bombardier Iltis having fun in the springtime mud. All things considered, $6,000 for an Iltis with less than 28,000 kilometers (17,398 miles) on the clock is a steal. The owner tells that “it had rust, so I removed the panels,” the reason he bought new ones from Germany. These panels need to be welded.
A strong runner with two new batteries, two set of steel wheels, original doors and soft top, this is an incredibly rare and outlandish vehicle for the Stateside automotive landscape. So... will it be this piece of 4x4 and military history or a Mazda Miata MX-5 NB? You decide.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News