Forty years of pineappling

[Junkman]

http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/news/classic-car-auctions/800023436/40-years-of-the-golf/

[brickwall]

Golf is boring....oh! Wait....what?

 

 

Yep golf is boring.

[brickwall]

Or is it?

[Pillock]

The Golf is interesting.

 

Maybe not for the reasons VW would want you believe that, but it is.

It's interesting because it started out as an honest little car - look at the reviews in the 70s and it was up alongside Alpines, Dolomites and Allegros. It was about the same cost as these and offered the same sort of benefits but with a slight air of quality. If you wandered into a VW dealer in the early 70s you were surrounded by outdated technology, oddball cars and no real cohesive brand (VW 412, the Beetle still twitching away in the corner like someone's great grandad, and the beginnings of combined VW - Audi dealers). The Golf was the future!

 

The Mk1 was great. Ignore the pedestal it now finds itself placed on, especially if you include the swallowtails covered in the semen of a thousand spotty oiks. The GTI was obviously well remembered as starting something but even the base models were well put together, effective transport that sat well in the price lists. 

The Mk2, less so. Fatter and no more capable. The Mk3 added rust. The Mk4 added image problems, you see a blue GTI now and you can almost guarantee it's got drugs in the glovebox and no insurance.

So the interesting bit really was the observations of what 40 years of customer demands, research and market pressures does to a simple car. Not just the size increase that's happened to every car out there (how many manufacturers have had to put a "supermini" in their range to sit below the "supermini" of ten years ago?) but also the demands for better spec, and the image change. It's gone from honest little runaround, German quality at sub-British prices, to a tank of a vehicle with heated everything for top-brand prices. VW used to delight in being a budget brand, they were happy to knock out Beetles year after year, for very little money, because they'd long since made back their development costs.

 

I suppose the most interesting bit is that few models have had a constant name for 40 years (Fiesta, Astra must be coming close) so this is all the more noticeable. When the Focus replaced the Escort, it was a new beginning. This is how the Golf has changed from Golf to Golf to Golf.

[dollywobbler]

The Mk1 Golf was pretty revolutionary. Today, bland trying-to-be-posh hatchbacks are all the rage, but back in 1974, the Golf immediately made stuff like the Ford Escort, Hillman Avenger and Vauxhall Viva seem woefully outdated. When you consider VW's track record up to that point, it's all the more remarkable. Sadly though, the Mk2 didn't move the game on at all really. I'm not sure mine compared all that favourably against a Ford Escort Mk3/4 or Vauxhall Astra Mk2. It still felt a bit 1970s to be honest - albeit the fresh side of the 1970s.

[Junkman]

 

 

 

 

However, I expected this thread to be flooded with stuff like this:

 

 

[trigger]

I suppose the most interesting bit is that few models have had a constant name for 40 years (Fiesta, Astra must be coming close) so this is all the more noticeable. When the Focus replaced the Escort, it was a new beginning. This is how the Golf has changed from Golf to Golf to Golf.

 

It's just dawned on me reading that that they have been making the Honda Civic for 42 years now, as you say, there can't be many new cars still out there being manufactured with the same name for that long.

[saucedoctor]

By 1973 VW was in the shit, and the Golf couldn't arrive a minute too soon. Early mark 1s were bloody awful, build-wise, but they got it sorted in time. One of my Uncle's mates was a VW salesman at the time, and he recounted to me that there were mutterings of VW being on it's arse and in danger of going to the wall. As Pillock says, the rest of the range was creaky and antiquated.

[Junkman]

Golf is boring....oh! Wait....what?

 

 

Yep golf is boring.

 

Aye, and ORL GURLFZ IZ SHTI, you know.

[Alexg]

Pillock nails it, with LOLs

[Junkman]

 

[oman5]

I wonder if Alfa had built the Sud properly would people be waxing lyrical over those? to drive, leagues ahead of the golf. and even older.

[Sigmund Fraud]

By 1973 VW was in the shit, and the Golf couldn't arrive a minute too soon.

 

I've always thought that Autoshitters of the early 1970s must have loved VW. Their model range comprised of a couple of successful but unbelievably dated, pre-war designs and a couple of supposedly up-to-date liabilities that nobody bought. Shite-tastic.

 

Shame the Golf happened, I reckon they would have otherwise gone under, but hopefully not before producing some more awfully obsolete, rear-engined, weapons-grade shite for us to lust over 40 years down the line.

[Junkman]

^^

This.

 

There were the terminally shite 411s and 412s and whatnot and everything was a beige Shiter's paradise, and then they ruined the world with this utterly good boremobile, that's roughly as inspiring as being dead.

[Sigmund Fraud]

roughly as inspiring as being dead.

 

Well, I've never been dead, but I've driven a 1400cc Mk.IV Golf and it certainly is the automotive equivalent of an induced coma.

[brickwall]

I never knew it was  a Volkswagen Rabbit in the US until 1985. Is this correct?

[Grundig]

I never knew it was  a Volkswagen Rabbit in the US until 1985. Is this correct?

 

...... & the Passat was a Quantum in the US of A 

[chaseracer]

I never knew it was  a Volkswagen Rabbit in the US until 1985. Is this correct?

Expat Yank lived near us when I was a sprog, ran a '79 Rabbit on New York plates. In Worcestershire...

 

I think he was one of the scientific types at the MoD base where the Owd Giffer worked, because that's the kind of expensively eccentric thing boffins do. He must have been so surprised to learn we had Golfs here already.

[Asimo]

I never knew it was a Volkswagen Rabbit in the US until 1985. Is this correct?

Yes, hence all of those "amusing" aftermarket GTI badges with two humping rabbits. Rabbit Injection. Ho Ho.

 

The question is, did the USA Rabbit have the amusing Golf ball gearlever knob? An even more amusing rabbit gearlever knob perhaps?

 

Passat was a Passat before Golves. And the Scirocco came before the Golf. The first Golfs rusted like seaside Fiats. A friend had the use of his mum's new base Golf 1100 in 1974. It replaced the family Morris Minor and it was everything the Minor was, just modern. It had very little extra compared to the '69 Minor, perhaps a heated rear screen and a door mirror? It seemed faster and it did certainly out corner the Minors and Beetles we were used to.

[320touring]

The golf is a funny one..

 

The burd has a mk1 cabrio gti, in bits.

 

Once upon a time it worked, and it was a hoot!then the rebuild came. All parts still available, at reasonable prices.

 

We're half way done, change of job means she may have more time to spend on it now.

 

It doesn't come apart as easily as an e30, that's for sure.

[brickwall]

I never really understood the Golf, or the Mini or the Beetle. Look what they've become.

 

The point I'm trying to make is buy a Skoda.

[chaseracer]

The point I'm trying to make is buy a Skoda.

 

Yep.

 

 

[barefoot]

You wrong, golf 1 am nice.

[Pillock]

It's quite incredible that given VW "invented" the GTI, they spent the next few decades screwing it up. Each revision lost a little bit of the spark and was a bit duller. The early Mk2 wasn't bad, the Mk3 was crap even in 16v flavour. Like Vauxhall SRis it became just a trim level, and not even a good one at that.

 

Perhaps the R will become what the GTI was in the early 80s but it's hard to see at that price. It's not accessible.

[catsinthewelder]

The proper hot hatches now are Clio/Polo sized arn't they?

 

Golfs and Meganes are more like XR4i's and R21 turbo's in size and weight.

[r.welfare]

What a shame the K70 didn't catch on.

 

Actually my wife loves Golfs and would happily have another, having had two Mk2s (including a GTI that was stolen). Thankfully though I control the purse strings.

 

That said she ran a Mk3 up to something like 155k with no problems at all. It wasn't even that rusty when it was sold at ten years old. Probably helped by the fact it was a basic 1.4 three door in Doom Blue.

[Justin Case]

Forty years and seven generations to go from cheap and cheerful to expensive and cheerless

[Junkman]

What a shame the K70 didn't catch on.

 

VW did everything they could that it doesn't. It was the bastard child left over from the NSU takeover by VW.

Ro80, K70, get it? The K70 was a NSU through and through and the VW overlords hated it.

[oman5]

I don't dislike VWs, my mk3 golf 1.9d is now in the hands of a mate and is nudging 300k on the original engine. Got to say that build quality by the time of the mk3 was not up to Ford standards and certainly not worth the premium price when new. 

I could probably find a home for a VR6 though.

[Sudsprint]

Having had Mk1 Polo (sweet), Mk1 Jetta GLi (fugly and rapid) and Mk1 Scirocco GLi (gorgeous and rapid) I am a big fan of the Giugiaro era.