I bought a German kei-car...

It's a VW Lupo, first registered in 2002, and 190k km(about 120k miles) on odometer. 1.4 MPI engine with 60 horsepower, and two previous owners.

No central locking, no A/C, no power windows, no ABS, but at least it has a nice "Open Air" roof. I did a test drive. Very stable at 110km/h, no problem other than slight wind noise.

I negotiated the price down to 870 Euros(1,000 USD), and the owner will drop it off at my parking lot next Saturday. The car will be registered 2-3 weeks later, because of Vehicle Registration Office being very slow...

I hope I made a right decision about this car!

BTW, according to this TV report Lupo is most likely to be victim of a cat-theft, along with VW Polo and Golf in Germany.  I guess I'll have to park it very carefully.

They had a special  model when they first came out that had a   big window sticker ,

3L =100km or  maybe it was 100km = 3L   :)

this was 78 miles per gallon !

Thats cool!

In reply to californiamilleghia :

3 liters of diesel per 100km. It even had a lightweight tailgate!

There were some Lupo 3L under my budget, but in this city I can't drive one because of the diesel ban...

In reply to Slippery :

I was kinda nitpicky looking at other Lupos(too much rust for a VW, questionable owners, etc.), but this one was very nice!

Those lupos are just about to hit 25 years old and be eligible for import. 

I like the look of them a lot and will seriously consider importing one. I love a tiny hatchback

Trent said:

Those lupos are just about to hit 25 years old and be eligible for import. 

I like the look of them a lot and will seriously consider importing one. I love a tiny hatchback

From 2023? Lupo was very popular in Japan, so I think it would be quite easy to import one from there.

The seller came yesterday and dropped off the car.

1.4 engine with 60ps... Looking at tags and stickers it does need brake fluid and engine oil change.

Compared to its competitors(Peugeot 106/107, Fiat Seicento, Renault Twingo) interior feels nice, and build quality is very good. Curb weight is quite heavy though. 975 kg!

Rear legroom is better than I expected, probably because I'm small...

The roof is not leaking, but it is definitely worn badly. Replacement costs around 200 Euros.

I guess it's going to be fun driving this car around this summer!

In reply to Trent :

I have dirty thoughts about 1.9 TDI swapping one. 

I made some mistakes.

After reading previous service records, I noticed there were no air filter changes for quite a long time. So I ordered new filters, thinking "how hard can it be?", because it is just a filter. An item that has to be serviced every year or so. I was very wrong...

Air filters inside the engine cover, behind a separate air filter housing. 10 screws just for the housing. Three different hoses had to be removed. Spark plug wires, too.

After I put eveything back into place, I started the engine and noticed something was very off. Heavy smell of gas, and idle was very rough. Plus some sparks from ignition coil...

Some folks at reddit pointed out that it must be faulty spark plug wires, so I ordered one from Bremi, and OE NGK spark plugs.

Even with new wires and spark plugs idle is still rough(less rough, though...) and smell of gasoline is still heavy. I checked everything again - wire is in correct order, and fully inserted. It seems the engine cover is pressing the new wire too hard. Can that be a source of a problem? New wire seems to be thicker and shorter.

I'm taking this car to local mechanic tomorrow and see what had gone wrong. I think I bought the wrong wire...

If you're concerned about catalytic converter theft, put some sort of vented shield on the bottom to cover it up or weld some cables to it that connect to the chassis.  Preferably in hard-to -reach areas where getting a grinder or sawzall on it would be hard to impossible.