Older cars can be like diamonds in the rough – sometimes they need some polishing to suit a new owner’s tastes. And often, the only appropriate reaction to modifications not done to your taste (okay, we’ve all scoffed under our breath at someone else’s choices) is one question – how would I do it differently? Here we have a case in point – the seller of this 1987 Golf GTI 16 valve , for sale in Edmonds, WA for $3600, has a very solid car with some modifications made to his taste.
The car looks pretty plain from this angle, with a de-badged grill, refrigerator-white paint, and only a small lip spoiler and Porsche D90 wheels to hint at any performance potential. Oh, and a ridiculous drop on coilover suspension. So this modification was clearly done by some dubstep-on-his-iPhone-listening, backwards-cap and baggy-pants-wearing young whippersnapper, right? This car was probably built before he was a glint in his daddy’s eye! Get off my lawn! But you can also see he was working off a decent base, with no visible rust and a straight-looking body.
The interior looks pretty tidy, although overexposure (cleverly?) disguises any damage to the driver’s seat bolsters, which didn’t usually make it into the next millenium, nevermind a full 13 years in. The dash looks to be free of any major hacking (although the steering column shroud *may* be missing), and the pointless step of removing the rear seat has not been taken. The door pockets appear to be missing too, but those plastic bits can’t be too hard to obtain. If you look on the a-pillar, or the full interior shot on the listing, you can see a full tartan headliner. Now that’s turning the GTI theme up to 11! Or he’s a very patriotic Scot.
You can also see the tartan on the inside of the c-pillar in this shot. The car also looks straight here, although you may notice some indentations on the bottom of the sill. It can probably be chalked up to excessive lowering, or youthful exuberance, but you’ll want to crawl underneath to make sure everything’s okay and negotiate accordingly. The RustyButTrusty Golf suffered similar damage at the hands of a borrower, but it has not impacted the car in any substantive way.
Coming from a world of engines with plastic covers, and putting aside gorgeous production intakes like the Alfa Romeo 164 V6 and the Porsche 928 V8, this is a really good looking intake. It clearly telegraphs the car’s sporting intentions in a time where there was still a point to looking under the hood, or sometimes even a need to do so. With 134hp, and around 2500 lb., this should get down the road pretty quickly and sound great doing it. What would you do with this car?
Tags: 16 valve, Feature, german, golf, gti, hatch, hatchback, volkswagen
Rusty But Trusty 
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