more interest in this than my zed for sale (see ad haha)..so i thought id let you know what this wonderful little car was like
mk golf vr6 2.9
I love the way this wee car looks...all square stance, pugnacious, ready for anything. the mk1 golf was a masterpiece of giugiario crisp edge styling, very of its time, the mk2 screams eighties chic. it’s impossible to see a mk2 gti if you’re a certain age and not think of three things...the woman with the squeaky earring, Paula Hamilton throwing away all her fineries except her gti key, and the man who put it all on red and it came up black. I remember another golf ad, one more pertinent to this little rascal..it simply showed a rally prepared golf yumping over a crest at full chat...the by line simply said..golf balls.
this little rocket has BIG golf balls. the big bore vr6 fitted to it throws out a meagre for its displacement 190hp and change, but in a car that weighs about as much as a half empty box of shredded wheat, that is more than plenty. indeed, if ever a car proves ljks old adage that enough is never enough but sometimes more than enough can be just enough, this is it. the vw vr6 engines are big, unstressed, sonorous engines. they really fly to the almost 7k redline and make a deliciously off beat v6 thrum, maybe something to do with them ALMOST being an inline..they are, if I recall, a very narrow angle v. I’ve owned many golf gti over the years and believe me, a good 16v gti mk2 is a quick little car and more importantly FEELS quick, with totally accessible performance and handling to match. this cars extra 43hp and the commensurate hike in torque make it much, much quicker. it’s the golf vw maybe should have made as a run out, maybe all in alpine white like mine, maybe with nice leather trim and bbs cross spokes..would have been a hell of a car, but instead, its been left to professional companies like nik saran and gifted home mechanics working out of sheds all over our sceptre isle to make the golf that never was.
My car also has upgraded suspension, koni adjustable and eibach springs. It sits on the 5 stud hubs of a mk3 golf and has big 280mm brakes up front. It turns, grips, goes and stops as good as it goes. And boy does it GO. Any gear, any slight increment of throttle and you feel it straining, wanting to burst forward, like a friendly, slightly unruly dog straining on its lead. As you leave the 30mph limit, you loosen the lead and plant your right foot. Second gear brings 70mph, third brings 100mph, fourth brings 120mph and fifth, allegedly, 153mph...IN A MK2 GOLF. But its the way it goes that makes all the difference. I’m pretty sure I have owned and driven faster cars, but none have felt as fast as this wee Wolfsburg in sheep’s clothing. It feels properly, ballistic ally quick to me anyway. Its happy to sit in fifth gear and trundle around, surfing a rich vein of torque accelerating cleanly from as low as 20mph or so. You CAN drive this like miss daisy, but hey, where is then fun in that. Drop to second and the needle hunts for the redline like it just insulted its mother..and again in third...and fourth..and, well, you can surely put together where im going with this. This car will attempt to headbut the horizon any time you want, its wheel writhes as the front tyres dig in for grip, yet its not any worse than more modern front drivers with big power that iv driven, testament to how sorted the golf’s chassis always was. Remember, this cars underpinnings go back to the 1984.
The car does feel a wee bit more nose heavy than a standard golf gti, but you soon learn to drive around that using a slow(ish!!) in, fast out technique. Its not as chuckable, not as nimble but is no embarrassment thru the twisties. The suspension has obviously not just been bolted on out the box, it has been set up properly. Car corners flat and composed and you can still edge the tail out a wee bit if you back off a wee bit too quickly, in fact, more so than in the standard car due to the big lump up front, but its biddable and never feels as frisky as a pug 205 gti or my late, lamented Alfa 145 cloverleaf did..(now that car, I’m sure, had a hidden agenda to rid the planet of me, but thats another story for another day) as mentioned, the little car stops on the apocryphal sixpence too due to its big brakes. Overall the car has put a bigger smile on my face than almost any other car iv owned. It’s a total sleeper, a q car in the finest sense. Even inside the coal mine dark cabin you have no giveaways to the cars prodigious oomph. The last owner fitted a rather lovely d and w leather wheel but thats it, inside is typical 80s golf. Workmanlike Germanic and almost austere. Great driving position though and a lovely positive gearchange thru the golf ball shape gear knob..those wacky Germans, the one joke they have made in the last 50 years and it’s a classic!!
Bad points??..obviously there are bad points. You wouldn’t hear a squeaky earring in this golf due to the various squeaks and rattles it has amassed over 20 years of hard usage. ..it has a bit of the dreaded tin worm here and there, but, I’m struggling now to add more. Cars like this tell us more about what we don’t need than what we do. No air con, no electric windows, no electric sunroof...only an intimate one on one driving experience unsullied by layers of nannying safety features and undiluted by the huge amounts of weight modern cars carry around in the shape of all these must have gimmicks.
I always look back and smile at this one, I feel an affinity for it, a bond, its foursquare confident looks, its attitude, its character..and then when I go into my house I see my two wee staffy cross dogs leaping and bounding around in unbridled joy, unfettered emotion, uncaring of what the world thinks, and the penny drops. The wee golf feels like a terrier, it has the boundless energy, the vivacity, the pugnacious, fearless attitude. It FEELS like it has a huge heart, it looks a little bit disreputable and out of fashion but anyone who drives it has to admit its huge fun, its great company, it makes you laugh out loud. And like all mongrels, which the golf surely is, in the kindest sense of the word, the wee car is loveable in a way that sometimes highly strung pedigree pure breeds just aren’t. The pure breeds might look the part, but the fun is always in boisterous mongrel with a hyperactive tail. My wee golf is a four wheeled Staffordshire bull terrier, it punches above its weight, makes a lovely growl and is ALWAYS up for a carry on
GRRR.....
yeah, 2.9 rado vr6 mate..i had a 2.8 mk2 aswell