Posts Tagged ‘Golf’

Rust is Lighter Than Carbon Fibre

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

When we spotted this twisted beauty last week, we were instantly impressed by its ghetto fabulousness. A stipped down, rusted primer coated Mk1 with Tangoed alloys, a matt black hood with comp stripes and all sorts of add-​​ons, make it an instant headturner.

But it’s the collection of stickers in the rear door windows that make us want to share this with you fully. There’s an urgent sense of creativity in the edit, and when you combine this with the hunkered down steez of the car itself. But really, what we’re seeking to do is to find the owner/​creator of this joyous piece of Somerset car culture.

There’s a dedicated crew of modders in the area we spotted the car (around the Midsomer Norton/​Radstock area) and reckon there’s a fair chance that someone out there in the North Somerset coalfields is an Influx reader and knows knows whose ride this is.

So there, the shout goes out.

We want to meet you!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Influx Daily | 7 Comments »

Modern Classic: The Golf GTi

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

Images: VW_​Press

It is easy to forget just how this little car changed the car world. When it emerged most stuff was rear wheel drive and badly made with overhangs.

I suppose the GTi really has signi­ficance for me because the year it finally arrived in UK spec (right hand drive) was the year I was entered this world. 1979.

Little did anyone realise that thirty-​​odd years later, that humble little boxy Giugiaro design would have such a worldwide wealth of disciples.

Volkswagen’s Golf was not the first hatch­backed car on sale but, when a bunch of VW engineers set out to make a warmed-​​over version as an after-​​hours backroom project, the result rebooted the hard drive of every car manufac­turer in the industry.

And to think it nearly didn’t happen.

Drive to work now and the subtly tasty hatchback car is a pre-​​requisite of daily traffic. It is almost certainly the favourite genre of car in the UK, and you don’t need to look far to see why.

The Golf GTI functions as a jack and master of all trades; a venerable family chariot, a sports car and one that feels special, not to mention affordable. A leading motoring journ­alist once described the mk1 GTi as ‘the sports cars you didn’t have to suffer to own.’

Prior to the Golf GTi’s birth, to reach its calibre of performance you’d need to drive a cramped coupe or a bulky saloon. The GTi didn’t have the tempera­mental traits of highly-​​strung Italian machinery, the hit-​​and-​​miss quality of British cars or the kitsch of many ‘70s Japanese try-​​hards.

It killed the kudos of Ford’s Capri and Opel’s Manta in one fell swoop. I know, because as a kid in the mid-​​eighties I watched how the Golf headed the crusade for credible front-​​drive frolics.

The hatchback package ticked off practic­ality, the Golf was ample sized and light­weight, excep­tional build quality and with one of the tautest, sweetest chassis tasted to date.

Fitted with an eager fuel injected front-​​drive four-​​pot engine the thing just inhaled meandering B-​​roads and returned decent motorway comfort, together with real-​​world mpg. You could cruise it, you could gun it, and you could do the school run without it missing a beat or costing a fortune to keep alive.

And, like a decent Sunday Roast, it’s this 35-​​year old automotive recipe that just keeps deliv­ering satis­faction and credibility.

The GTi Golf kindled the car class­lessness of its era. Bankers, race drivers, career mums and anyone in between fell for its modestly displayed sportiness. Who needed a weekend sports car when you could drive a GTi 24⁄7?

A lot of cars go down in history for their compromises, but the Golf GTi bucks that trend completely. We love it precisely because it doesn’t compromise a damned thing. Never would you see a Golf GTi classified saying ‘baby forces sale’.

There were many who thought the Beetle’s mass appeal and legendary status could never be bettered, but the GTi disproves them instantly and follows in its cult footsteps.

Of course, even champions have wobbly moments. The GTi’s thoroughbred DNA has been diluted a few times, with the lowest point for me being 1992. The mk3 was a bit chubby and, well, not very good, in my opinion.

The MK3 was launched with a 2.0-litre boat anchor that was a mere five horsepower more than the ‘70s original, and managed to be no faster in the sprint to 60mph than a 1.3 Toyota Corolla. Bad times.

VW had turned the GTi into a Vegas Elvis with all the luxury and glitz, together with a good portion of pie-​​loving and bronchial wheeze. And just like Elvis records, it kept selling.

The Mk3 did bring the VR6 though – the begin­nings of the Golf’s relationship with a six-​​cylinder engine. It sounded great, but it felt too middle-​​aged tracksuit to be a GTi. It fogged up the original GTi philosophy.

I’ve never really found love with the R32s either, but that’s just me. Once immersed into the forum-​​filled world of GTis you realise this is a religion divided by the six marks and 35 years of evolution.

You’re either a mk2 3-​​door man or an R32 lover; a G60 worshipper or a Belgian look Mk4 follower. In addition to the Golf’s multi­tasking talent of refinement with hooliganism-​​available-​​on-​​tap mentality, it happens to take rather well to modifying.

I’ve had a few GTis and have utmost respect for the genre found­ation layer. Sometimes the original gets buried amongst the flood of copycats, but VW has always seemed to keep re-​​inventing their star pupil. Besides the obvious mk1 (how futur­istic must this have looked in 1976?), for me it’s the mk2 and mk5.

The mk2 for its sheer longevity and fact it has aged as well as Jane Seymour. And the mk5 for its exquisite combin­ation of retro tartan and logoed lights.

Long may the icon shine on.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Features | 6 Comments »

Your Car Was Born in the Seventies

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Your car was born in the 1970s. Car-​​nerds will argue about this, but the seventies mark the start of the modern era for the motor car. The economic and energy crises of the decade shook the car-​​world hard. It had to radically remake itself, and wound up looking nothing like it did before, and a lot like it does now.

These are the years that saw the decline of the US and British car indus­tries and the ascent of the Japanese. Cars got safer, smaller and more efficient. We started driving hatch­backs and the MPV was invented. In fact, for an industry that often didn’t know where its next meal was coming from, a lot got done. So unless your car predates 1970, it owes a lot to the 1970s.

It all started so well. In 1970 Steve McQueen made Le Mans, and at the wheel of a Porsche 911 and 917 made driving cooler than it ever had been. But it all went wrong almost immedi­ately with the US Clean Air Act of 1970. If you’re under 50, you’re one of the children whose health and future the Act was designed to protect, and of course we’re very grateful. But we can’t help but mourn the US muscle car, which was at its maddest in 1970 with the monstrous, bewinged Plymouth Superbird. But because of the Act, the muscle car was stone dead in just a year in the most extraordinary, instant mass-​​extinction event in automotive history.

The oil crisis of ’73 and the recession that followed nearly did for the supercar industry too. Some of the most famous names changed hands more often than an old fiver and bounced in and out of bankruptcy; car magazines regularly arrived at the factories of Italy’s Supercar Valley to test a new model only to find the gates locked shut, or the paint still drying on the car they were meant to be driving. But Lamborghini somehow still managed to make the Countach. It was the defin­itive seventies supercar; shocking and angular to look at and terri­fying to drive. First shown in 1971, it took three years to get the cash together to get it into production.

The British car industry pretty much did die in the seventies; from making 1.9 million cars in 1972 it slumped to half that number by the end of the decade, and soon not a single British-​​owned volume carmaker was left. But the oil crisis wasn’t to blame; just look at the cars the British carmakers were insulting us with. The Austin Allegro, launched in 1973, had all the dynamism and sex appeal of your elderly Auntie Flo in her mauve Sunday best. By comparison with VW’s Golf, launched just a year later with Giugiaro’s hallmark seventies ‘folded-​​paper’ styling — and a practical hatchback – the Allegro looks dumpy and retarded. No wonder buyers – Brits included – deserted the British carmakers.

Others were showing the old powers how it ought to be done. Honda’s super-​​clean, super-​​frugal CVCC-​​powered cars led the Japanese assault on the US. American buyers, once chauvin­istic but now desperate for reliable, economical cars loved them, and the US car industry has never really recovered. Volvo’s VESC exper­i­mental safety vehicle not only presaged how Volvos would look for the next 20 years but had two decades’ worth of safety advances aboard too; some of which we now take for granted (crumple zones, airbags) and some, like reversing cameras, that are still reserved for high-​​end cars.

But Giugiaro’s Megagamma concept was arguably the most signi­ficant of the seventies, though its impact wouldn’t be felt until much later. It started life as a sketch for a compet­ition run by New York’s Museum of Modern Art in ’76 to design a new checker cab for the city. To cut congestion but create more cabin space Guigiaro decided to build upwards, and the people carrier was born.

If you want to see how the car moved on the ‘70s, look at the performance cars that bookmark the decade. At one end, that crude Plymouth Superbird. At the other, the Audi Quattro; turbocharged, four-​​wheel drive and beauti­fully made. And frankly, not all that different to the 270bhp, turbocharged, four-​​wheel drive and beauti­fully made Volkswagen Golf R that’s sitting on my drive as I write this. The logbook for my car says 2010, but I know it was born in the seventies.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Features | 12 Comments »

Stars of the Seventies

Friday, July 16th, 2010


1970 Plymouth Superbird

A few more muscle cars trickled out in ’71, but the Superbird’s massive rear wing marks the literal high-​​point of muscle car design, and also its swan-​​song.

1971 Lamborghini Countach concept

Why are all the best supercars – McLaren F1, Bugatti EB110 – launched into the teeth of reces­sions? Fortunately, the Countach’s incan­descent styling meant it lasted into the nineties.

1972 Volvo VESC

This ESV embar­rassed some of the bigger players who had taken a distinctly lax approach to their buyers’ health. Volvos have sold on safety ever since.

1973 Austin Allegro

Just bloody awful: epitomized everything that was wrong with the British car industry. Some say there’s no such thing as a bad car now, but there was back then.

1974 Volkswagen Golf

There had been hatch­backs before, but none looked as good, or mixed premium feel with affordable price like the Golf. Set the template that family cars still follow.

1975 Porsche 911 Turbo

‘911’ and ‘Turbo’ put together have always seemed slightly tauto­lo­gical, and were certainly terri­fying in these early cars. But 35 years on they’re still being made.

1976 Aston Martin Lagonda

William Town’s insane styling is one of the stand-​​out designs of the decade. Digital dash and computer-​​controlled everything meant they broke down as much as they stood out.

1978 Lancia Megagamma

At the Turin motor show Giugiaro unveiled a concept that would spawn not just a new car, but a whole new type of car.

1980 Audi Quattro

It might have been launched in 1980 but the Audi Quattro  –  full of brawn but laced with new tech – was the ultimate expression of seventies automotive ethos. A truly modern performance car; still sensa­tional to drive, and still inspiring current fast cars.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Features | 2 Comments »