41st Year of Ownership

March 05, 2025, 01:09:17 AM

Hello all, I live in Tewkesbury and have an early A reg Mk 2 Golf GTI, that I bought new on 25 June 1984, and which I managed to buy back again in 2001. I also own an E reg Mk2 Jetta GTI 16V that I bought new on 9 July 1988, and have owned ever since. Both cars have been a bit neglected for the past three years, while I have been restoring an uninhabitable wreck of a Victorian townhouse, both were safely garaged/containered for the duration, although both did see some use. This year as I am finally in the house, and they have a lovely new garage, it is time to lavish some attention on them!

I must have been the only person at the time who didn't rate VW's undersealing much, and the first thing that I did when I got them home was apply more underseal in the hot sunny weather on factory fresh floorpans, followed by some occasional waxoiling, and undersealing touch-ups; as a result both have always been very solid underneath.

Golfy had sadly deteriorated by 2001 during the thirteen years since I last owned it, and at 112k miles was starting to feel a bit mechanically sloppy, so I sent it to TSR in 2002 for a complete mechanical rebuild, and upgrading of the engine, clutch, differential, brakes, and suspension. Then the next year it went in for a respray, but it took me two years to get it back from the resprayer. The only panel that needed renewal was the usual wiper scuttle panel, as well as a small hole in one of the door bottoms. At the time the Max Power lads were butchering cars, as I decided to go the opposite way, so that the car looks totally stock and runs standard ride height, but is quite highly modified underneath.

By contrast, having never been out of my care the Jetta is still pretty much like new, always having been garaged, and used sparingly so that it has only covered 55k miles, and is still in Tornado Red, not Tornado Pink. It has not been without a couple of minor corrosion issues: it had a bit of corrosion under the windscreen rubber, in the usual spot, which eventually meant that the screen had to come out, so that a small patch could be welded into the wiper scuttle panel. Several years before I had had to have a patch welded in behind the number plate, as the supplying dealers, Listers of Stratford-upon-Avon had decided in their infinite wisdom to drill the number plate mounting screws through the tinwork, rather than the two plastic bungs that VW provided. I had the whole rear panel resprayed at the same time, as I found that the action of road grit tends to sandblast this matt, and have since had to spray the matt black portion again. I guess that this is just a continuing minor irritation! The only other changes from stock, have been a Scorpion Stainless exhaust system, when the original had the nerve to fail at twelve years, and a Votex(?) cassette holder in the central console cubbyhole: an official VW accessory that I bought from the VW dealer in Digbeth, in the first weeks of the car's life. Otherwise it is exactly how it left the factory.

Golfy is now quite a raw car now, and incredibly invigorating for short, fast blasts, but it is rather noisy, hot and hard, with its upgrades, and is quite go-kart like to drive, with all the rubber other than in the strut turrets taken out, and a slightly faster rack in Polybush mounts, so that change of direction is something that one only needs to think about, and the slightest twitch of the wrists generates an instant response. In many ways I have always preferred the Jetta, as with more weight at the back it is better balanced, although my late father, who had a lovely fluid style and was a better driver than I, always claimed that it was tail happy. Although Golfy's handling was much improved by a Quaife ATB diff, even if the sensation of tightening the line under power took a bit of getting used to - one naturally sets up an FWD car for the understeer in a bend, and at first I kept finding that I was having to let a little lock off to avoid hitting the apex!

Hopefully the future of the cars is assured, as my children have now decided who will get which car when I am no longer here.

I have had a variety of daily driver family cars to keep these as garage queens, including a V5 Bora that was written off by my ex-wife, a 2.5 Sport AWD X-Type estate, a 3.0 Sovereign AWD X-Type estate that had a few performance and braking mods (the standard, Mondeo, brakes were totally inadequate for a 146 mph car with an all up weight of 2.1 tonnes), an X350 generation Jaguar XJ8 4.2 Sovereign LWB (everyone should have at least four cars, and every couple should have a least five cars!), I ran all of these for several years, at least. But since my last X-Type departed for the great car park in the sky just before Christmas, I have been running my daughter's Dacia Sandero (the shame, the shame!) while she is at university, but she will want it back soon, so I am saving my pennies up for an early Up GTI: a great advantage of no longer having young children is not needing an estate car anymore! Although I particularly loved my XJ, which really was the most calming and comfy way of wafting to and from our annual holiday in the South of France, I am a small car person at heart.

Anyway that is me.

Re: 41st Year of Ownership

Reply #1 – March 05, 2025, 04:52:10 AM

Welcome along, that's quite the history you have there!

Re: 41st Year of Ownership

Reply #2 – March 05, 2025, 04:05:57 PM

Welcome to the forum. You do indeed have quite a history.

Re: 41st Year of Ownership

Reply #3 – March 06, 2025, 09:49:01 PM

Welcome, it's great to have another early GTI on board!

Please post some pictures if you can.

Regards

Nick

Re: 41st Year of Ownership

Reply #4 – March 06, 2025, 10:43:01 PM

Thanks everyone, it is kind of you.

I would be grateful for some advice on how to load images from the hard drive of my PC (I am old school, and don't use cloud services, nor am I on social media, partly because of the dangers of disclosing my personal information to all and sundry, and partly to have a life). I have been able to upload an Avitar, but I cannot see a similar function for messages.

Can anyone tell me how to do it please?