Old Top Gear 1992 - Volkswagen Golf GTI

take these two 16-valve golf GTI's ones an 87-year edge with 60,000 up the other a few months old with just a handful of miles on the clock put them on the Bruntingthorpe test track safely away from the public roads bury the throttles and watch the difference some cars grow old disgracefully but the GTI yusin's up in its middle age and just gets better and better for all its miles the older car goes like a banshee at the end of the two-mile straight there's a clear 6 car lead for the silver machine often imitated but rarely bettered the mark 2 Golf GTI still remains the longest lasting and best handling car in its class at 60,000 miles this 16-valve feels like it's just run in for 4000 pounds what this one cost here's a car which can chew the coattails of supercars five times the price this is an early night 2 GTI in 84 be in a car like this today would cost between two and two and a half thousand and most of them look as straight and as original as this body stripes and alloy pea wheels distinguish the earliest marked twos along with what the Germans considered to be a cheerful interior but amazingly they still had left-hand Drive wipers by late 1987 the wipers were the right way round the pee wheels alas became an option and side body moldings appeared to the interior however was a lot less garish legi 87 start at 3000 rising to 4 NAB it for a really proper car good value when you think an F reg cavalier would relieve you of nearly 6 grand and the mini wonder wagon the 16-valve offers the best value of the lot capable of 30 to the gallon and 125 miles an hour 16-valve spotters will be keen to note the forged alloy wheels slightly lower ride height rakish li angled roof aerial and these little catch me if you can 16-valve badges on its bottom the interiors gloomy and the non assisted steering heavy but the multi-valve GTI has to be the performance car bargain of the year this 30,000 miler will give you change from five grand and you can forget the rumors of unreliability basically the 16-valve does use oil when it's brand new and it will use oil if it's used you know i revs all the time in Ischl ii the rings down seal until they've done about 10,000 miles but we found a 16 valve that's probably done eighty thousand we use no oil at all as for the grim subject of insurance we got it down to four hundred and seventy pounds fully calm for 30 year old living in leicester and that's for the 16-valve ER 1990 16-valve cars come with BBS wheels rounded bumpers and power steering is standard if you can run to its 7,000 buys a fine Jeep later don't skimp on tires though Michelin mxv is just grip and grip and grip be on your guard for stolen recovered GTI's is quite a few than floating about now while they're not the end of the world and usually it's just a question of a missing radio may be missing seats and wheels you can always tell a stolen recovered by the fact that will have more than one key because the ignition lock and the doors have been forced this one is a rather radical example it's been picked clean but it'll probably go back on the road again because it's fundamentally a straight shell it's far better than something like this which is a damaged repaired GT on has just come out of the paint shop when you're buying a second-hand GT I think accident and there are certain places on the car which can tell you it's had any drama or not down here where the wing meets the bulkhead is a favorite if it's had a frontal Biff you'll see creases where the wings hit the screen pillar check the door gaps - you could drive a coach and four through this one opinions vary on body kits but I reckon they're often there to hide a multitude of sins under the bonnet is where you'll find most of the clues if we look under this one the first thing that alerts my suspicions is that little yellow sticker down there belongs here which means that the bonnets been painted look a bit closer and we can see it's a very orange e pili finish and then in this little hole I can see signs of the original tornado red which means that this this bond has been put on resprayed inspect the inner wings and the bulkheads for signs of distortion flaking paint and recent repairs these white stains are signs of rub down filler and tatty insulation like this means someone's been here before you now I've nothing against damage or parables per se on two conditions the first is that you know it's a car that's been repaired so you pay damaged repairable money and secondly the job has been well done in the case of GTI's they need to be jigged and if it hasn't been jig properly it will never ever handle or corner right jigs are used to align a distorted body shell to a precision of millimeters say walk away from anything that's been budged of the half a million golf sold in Britain a hundred thousand of Benji TI's so there's a huge infrastructure of independent specialists will service the thing for around eighty five quid a throw if it's a 16-valve uh run it on super unleaded with synthetic oil and change the cam belt every sixty thousand miles if like me you find your local Volkswagen Audi parts department can't help with sensibly priced trim parts panels bumpers light clusters and wheels and some of them really are mad money I know man who can this place may not look much but it's stacked to the rafters with secondhand GTI parts all of them perfectly usable and less than half price he's called Horace and his grills cost forty five pounds against VW's 140 150 quid buys you a tailgate VW want 172 a seat will make you sit up at 700 pounds Horace says it's yours for 25 parts which you should buy from V AG and mechanical things like exhausts now this is a copy exhaust but the original exhaust is fitted to the GT is capable lasting up to four years and 80,000 miles so it's a false economy to fit anything else cheaper ones don't last as long affect the performance and make more noise and if it's performance you're after the GTI lends itself extremely well to specialist tuning this 16-valve is bored out from 1.8 to 2 litres developing an extremely healthy 179 brake horsepower to you and me that means a highly illegal 135 miles an hour judging by their image on the street most people reckon they're plenty quick enough in standard tube are the street image of the GTI always a school way out it's got nothing you know they've got sick survivors in no class with any other car on the road Astra 16-valve XR 3 X or twos iris turbos you know the image of the 16 valve is way out compared to them the mileage on mine is a 35 36 thousand the age is just loosely not now ready right now I don't want anything else quite happy with a 16 1 time was you had to pay serious money for a Golf GTI but since grown inspiring insurance premiums of all but decimated the hot hatch market they're all over the place here we are at a Midland auction site and we're falling over things there are five in here and eight outside today this pretty ear edge eighty-seven fifty thousand mile 8-valve GTI has sold for very cheap 2850 my guess is that they won't stay this cheap for long so now's the time get out there and get amongst it

Channel: celticmadliam

Views: 602,807

Rating: 4.8422031 out of 5

Keywords: Old top gear, golf, gti, jeremy clarkson, richard hammond, james may, classic top gear, epic, bbc, retro, william woolard, chris goffey, tiff needell, season 15, episode 6, 8 valve, 16 valve, mark 1, mark 2

Id: 7sxN5GV8ywY

Length: 8min 13sec (493 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 05 2012