How Many People Can You Fit into a VW Rabbit?

Over the years of our marriage we have made many road trips, usually to visit our siblings or friends, and later, our children. Ironically, it seems that as our children got bigger we traveled in smaller and smaller vehicles! When they were really young we had a big Ford van from which we would remove the middle seat, making a nice carpeted play area on the floor. (There were no seat belt laws back in those days.) When they were ages 5, 8, and 11 we took a sixteen-day trip in a somewhat spacious Mercury Comet, but it wasn't spacious enough some days. Then in 1989 when they were 9, 13, and 15 we made the crazy decision (due to a very tight budget) to go see my sister Betty in Gloucester, MA in a tiny VW Rabbit!!

How Many People Can You Fit into a VW Rabbit?

In November 1989 our family had recently said our tearful goodbyes to two little foster children whose custody had been awarded to their father in Puerto Rico. Older daughter Miki was in college, and with our family suddenly smaller we decided on a whim to take a long weekend trip to see my sister Betty in Gloucester, MA. There wasn't much money in the budget for a trip, but we decided that if we could survive having five people in our little VW Rabbit, the savings on gas would make the trip possible. (I'm still not sure how we talked fifteen-year-old Lisa into it, and I'm quite sure she wonders the same thing!!)

We piled in at 5:00 AM, Dick in the driver's seat, Lisa riding shotgun, me in the middle of the back seat to keep peace between the Jeremy and Anthony. But alas, peace was hard to find even with my best laid plans. Long-legged Anthony was sitting directly behind Lisa, who also had considerably long legs and who also wanted to recline her seat. We were only ten minutes from home when we had to pull over, carefully extract ourselves from our little two-door prison, and then rearrange our order a bit. According to my diary the rest of the trip north was pretty good. We were quite good at playing games and reading while traveling. We had not yet allowed a TV into our home, so our children weren't used to needing that for entertainment. Actually, the best entertainment of the day was when we watched a bear go lumbering across the highway as we sat in sit-still traffic.

Betty lived in a spacious, charming old apartment with a view of the bay. It was delightful. The following day we decided to go sight-seeing in Boston. However, now there were six of us, and Betty's car was no bigger than ours. So we did the unthinkable - we piled six of us into the Rabbit! We had a delightful day climbing the Bunker Hill Monument and visiting a family who had been guests in our bed and breakfast the previous summer. They lived right across the street from the monument. We wanted to take a tour of the SS Constitution , but missed it by 10 minutes. Unfortunately, about that time we began noticing a strong odor of fuel. Our resident mechanic said there was a fuel injector that was threatening to act up, which meant nothing to the rest of us. But he said we'd better head back to Gloucester. So we did. It was dark by then anyway.

Unbelievably, the car gave us no trouble until we entered Gloucester. At that point it decided it was tired of the heavy load and just quit - just like that, along a busy main street! It absolutely refused to restart. So we swallowed our pride, got out, and pushed it until we got to a side street onto which we could get it out of the way. Cars horns were beeping at us and someone yelled, "Are you having fun?" Actually, we were! We were laughing like crazy! From there, we walked the mile to Betty's house in the crisp November air. And it was fun. Another memory had been made! God had kept that fuel injector working until we could walk the rest of the way. The next day Dick was able to buy the part that was needed to fix it, and a few days later the little Rabbit-that-Could got us safely back home to PA!