Binners, wad your mate who told you it was a great car selling it perchance ?

The mk4 is the most universally hated golfs of all time. Horrid things – yes i had one, handle like shit, eat front tires as they have wierd geometry to get them to stay on the road – put regular camber on the front wheels and it becomes lethal.

Coupled with regularly failing steering racks and waterpump failure due it was a very poor car over all..

Sensible head with 1 grand buy a 1 or 2 owner 1.6 focus with full service history.

Non sensible head id buy a low owner bimmer.

murf – Member
Gen 7 Celica all the way! I’ve got a 140 and it’s brilliant, the 190 must be a real hoot!
POSTED 9 HOURS AGO #

The 190 had just enough power to be fun but not too thirsty/big bills.

I know a few guys who work at toyota and praise them too. Miss mine so much, could get 2 bikes in the back too. I now have much quicker and expensive cars but I miss that little toyota so much.

trail_rat …

I love mine. I felt completely ambiguous towards the 2 Focuses I’ve had. I viewed them in the same way as you view a front door. Or a fridge. Neccessary, for practical purposes, but difficult to get enthusiastic about.

A 1.6 focus? You’ve clearly taken leave of your senses. Having been used to driving a 1.8 Focus, which was a bit meh anyway, someone gave me the 1.6 as a hire car. I found it difficult to comprehend how the missing 200cc seemed to have robbed it of about 95% of its power. It was a horrible gutless thing that struggled to get past anything on the motorway. Awful!

He specified ‘fun to drive’. I’ll stick by my claim that a 1.8 turbo-Panzer, with ….erm… ‘interesting’ handling characteristics is considerably more ‘fun to drive’ than a gutless 1.6 meh-mobile that will fall apart. The Golf may be ‘fun to drive’ in an OH MY ****ING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!! way. But thats still fun, right? 😀

Your non-sensible idea is more like it. Sensible is crap, totally overated, and should be avoided at all costs!

How do we collectively reckon the V6 Golfs, they look like they may fit the bill?

If it’s the earliest MkIV 1.8T with the AGU engine, then these are great engines (four a 4-pot). Very over-engineered compared to later iterations.

I had one in a A3 Sport that was still driving very well at 10 years old and 100K. I’d had it remapped to about 180 bhp and it absolutely flew.

I did uprate the springs, dampers, brakes and bushes plus a couple of other ancillary components as well as sticking decent tyres on it.

In standard guise it was a pretty dull euro box, but the modifications made it much more enjoyable.

At <£1000, the difference between a focus and golf is how well it’s been looked after.

“.erm… ‘interesting’ handling characteristics is considerably more ‘fun to drive’ than a gutless 1.6 meh-mobile that will fall apart”

No one mentioned the 1.6 golf as an option till that comment . 😉

pondo – Member

How do we collectively reckon the V6 Golfs, they look like they may fit the bill?

Mk3 VR6 (okay technically not a V6) I had one, it was INCREDIBLY thirsty, low 20’s which would be forgivable if it was fast, but whilst 176bhp was a lot for the mid 90s it wasn’t really any faster than the 16v GTI, which handled better. They cost a fortune to run in other ways too, any VR6 specific part is multiples of the GTi / normal versions. Also, the early ones rot, and rot and rot. There were loads of them around for £500 a couple of years ago, but all the rough ones are gone now I guess, I really liked mine, and it sounded amazing for a hatch, but no.

Mk4 R32, which you won’t get for a grand, try 5 times that, I personally think they’re massively over-valued, they’re okay, but they’re not amazing some people want £10k for a 10-15 year old Golf, they’re not Rallye / Limited rare, or nearly as cool and the MK5 Gti is cheaper and much better.

Cheers P-Jay – mebbe I’ll give em a swerve! 🙂