Tonight I got into a discussion about the VW Rabbit with a young man. They never had the Rabbit here in Mexico, or at least not by that name. After spilling all of the information I knew about the Rabbit and the Golf (which is what he owns and what started the conversation), I thought I would look up a little Rabbit history.
Most of my facts were true. I was off by a couple of years in the production of the Rabbit. I also did not know that the Golf, in all its iterations, is just a Rabbit with many different names. Though it makes sense that they would not build a whole new car. They just changed some of its look and slapped a new name on it. Other names are Golf, Cabriolet, Cabrio, Varient and even the Jetta is a Rabbit.
The Rabbit name has come back into use since 2003.
I got most of my information from a history page at The Rabbit Archive. Wikipedia also has way too much to say about the subject if you are really interested.