SEAT in the Holy Land

[IbizaGTI]

I've recently returned from a homeland trip to Israel and I thought I would show you all some of the SEAT + VW photos I took while I was there.

Firstly Israel seems to be a very different market to Australia, there is a real eclectic collection of cars on the roads, unlike here where the commodore and falcon rule and the others struggle along. having said that there seems to be a lot of VW and subsidiaries around. pretty much every taxi is either a toledo, cordoba, or an octavia. there are SO many Skoda's! some boxy old ugly things, and lots of the new ones like we're getting here. there are a lot of cars that are in the genre of the roomster, van like things with a bonnet - eg the Renault kangoo and Citroen have a very popular model too, these get used by tradies as well as just roomy cars...

Having moved to Oz 15 years ago the only SEATs I remember when I was growing up looked like this:
http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02282-1.jpg
yep, that is 1987 1.2L SEAT Malaga, pre VW takeover. the following two pics are the Ibiza of the same era, this one looks like a sporty version. there are a remarkably large number of these around...
http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02545-2.jpg

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02546-2.jpg

[IbizaGTI]

Cars in Israel and especially Jerusalem (where I grew up and spent most of my time this trip) are really beat-up. small streets, stressed drivers and a lack of wheel-pride culture means that cars get a bit of body damage and never get fixed. The place where you see the most hotted up and well looked after cars are in Druze villages (look it up in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze) if you don't know about the Druze) unfortunately we didn't spend much time in these and when we did I didn't get a chance to get picture happy. I did however get a pic of these Mark2 Ibiza's that were done up to various degrees of success:
http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02574-2.jpg

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02573-1.jpg

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02318-1.jpg

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02317-2.jpg

[IbizaGTI]

Sports cars and sports models of cars are rare over there - no car-pride culture, I did see one Mk4 Cupra - at night while we were driving so again no pics but here are a few Mk3+Mk4's any way:

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02478-2.jpg

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02477-1.jpg

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02310-2.jpg

[IbizaGTI]

Mark 3's above Mark 4 below:

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02311-1.jpg

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02312-1.jpg

I tried to get a photo of the new Toledos coz they are pretty weird, but all I got is this Altea:
http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02647-1.jpg

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/DSC02646-2.jpg

the Toledo is pretty much the same except there is a funny high wasted boot protruding from the back... heaps of taxi's are these new Toledos...

[IbizaGTI]

so that's about it, I'm sorry there are so many Ibiza's and not much else - well the reason for that is obvious, I wanted to take more pics but I felt like a weirdo circling cars on the street with my camera... didn't want to look too out of place... well just one to finish off, I took this one in the old city, if you look closely that's a Golf and a Passat parked in this monestry :)

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/images/imported/2007/12/100_0135-2.jpg

[Golf Loon]

Nice pics man, hope you enjoyed your trip.

Those pre VW Seats are monstrosities, i remember them. They were basically FIATs.

[the scotsman]

They were fiats with all the good fiat bits taken off! I had one and it had a Porsche engine, or so it said in huge script down the side and on the rocker cover! the rear suspension included a leaf spring parallel with the rear beam joining the rear arms... Didn't handle very well

[Jmac]

Yeah they had system Porsche hey. I worked on porsche and i think they might have made a plug lead for it hey LOL thats all . They were terrible and i hated doing MOTs on them mate they would always Fail with rust and strut top mounts.
They have came a very long way
Cheers

[Jmac]

Also whille ihear Fiat mentioned THE ABARTH!!!! How good was this wee rocket!!!!!

[Golf Loon]

lol the system porsche thing was bollocks. My mate had a 1.4 one and he blew the motor trying to keep up with me in a 950cc Fiesta :D He didn`t even call a tow truck, he just left it where it lay.

[99gti]

Aha! It's proof the VW's a the supreme vehicle!

[TDI Dude]

Aha! It's proof the VW's a the supreme vehicle!

Ahhhhh seeing all those old SEAT's brings a tear to the eye of a current SEAT owner soon to be GT Sport owner. Say what you will about SEAT but in 10yrs of owning that car i've only had to replace the drivers door barrelcoz of that damn vaccum assisted door locks!!! Car has served me very well and been quite a few places and even with just 95,000km on the clock I'm going to miss the beast when I have to wave bye byes to it! :(