Who doesn’t love a two-fer sale?! If you happen to have $16,000 lying around, and really who doesn’t.. (cough).. you could buy both of these unusual 1977 Volkswagen Iltis tough utility vehicles (TUVs?). Or, if you insist on breaking up the pair, the red one is $8,500 or offer and the blue one is $7,500 or offer. They can be found on Craigslist in Walsenburg, Colorado, 160 miles south of Denver.

The VW Iltis was officially known as the Type 183 and it was a 4WD vehicle made for the German military. Bombardier, in Canada, also made around 2,500 of them for the Canadian military and a similar amount for the Belgian military. They were never officially imported into the US.

It’s a unique vehicle, to say the least. It almost reminds me of the Namco Pony. In fact, the French government, in an attempt to replace their aging fleet of Hotchkiss Jeeps, teamed up with several foreign makers to come up with a winning combination. Citroën put engines in the Volkswagen Iltis and the C-44 was born. Peugeot put engines in Mercedes G-Wagons and named them the P4, and Renault put engines into the Fiat Campagnola and named them the TM500. In the end, the Peugeot/Mercedes P4 won the contract. Just a little odd trivia there for those of you who are still awake.

The red Iltis does looks like the better of the two here, hence the $1,000 price difference. The seller has them listed as 1977 models, but really the first model year for the Iltis was 1978. They were developed by the Audi team, back in the ol’ days, before Audi required its owners to wear black turtleneck sweaters and driving gloves and to drink hand-crafted lattes while driving. Ok, I made that last part up.

They say that they’re open for offers on both vehicles and that they both run, drive, and stop. Hey, that’s a good thing, those are three pretty important considerations when a person is looking at a vehicle, eh? They’re sort like a “Thing” but with 4WD, which would make them a heck of a fun vehicle to own, there is no question about that.

It looks like the red Iltis has been gussied up a bit with some metal plate on a few sections of it, hopefully that’s more for wear than to cover up rust. You can see the floor-mounted lever for activating the 4WD system. A fun fact: the seats are actually from the VW Passat, no really! Yet another fun fact: the 4×4 components were the basis for Audi’s famous Quattro system that would debut a few years later.

This is Volkswagen’s 1.7L inline-four and it would have had around 75 hp. These vehicles weigh just under 3,000 pounds so they aren’t light, but they aren’t exactly heavy either, especially given the 4×4 bits and pieces churning around under that unusual metal skin. Have you heard of the Iltis before? It seems like it would be a great 4×4 – but, that price, yowsa!