The MK1 Golf Barn Find
It started with a phone call. it ended with a full nut-and-bolt rebuild. Being into VWs has its pros and cons. The pro? People know us for our obsession with Germany’s biggest car brand. The con? Sometimes we go way too far, purely for the love of it. Autumn 2023. The phone rings. It’s an old friend, Shane. He tells me about a car sat at his workplace — owned by a guy who always planned to restore it “one day” but never did.“It’s for sale,” he says. That was the moment. A few photos came through and it quickly became clear this wasn’t just any Mk1 Golf. This was the one. The car that defined the term hot hatch. In our opinion, the best version ever made — a Mk1 Golf GTI.35,000 miles. That’s it. Truck loaded. Trailer hitched. We thought it’d be a clean-up-and-move-it-on job. We were very wrong.
The car we thought was blue? Actually black. The paint was so dead it had taken on a weird blue haze. It didn’t take long to realise this needed more than a detail. Undeterred, we called in the experts. Colour Kraft stepped up. Jay pulled the engine, and the rolling shell was sent off for paint. Not a hint of rust anywhere. We knew we had something special. The only panel replaced was the front lower valance due to damage — everything else? Original. Solid. Proper. Painted, rebuilt, and sharper than the day it rolled out of the factory in 1981. The engine build dragged — no point pretending otherwise. K-Jet issues are no joke. But while that saga played out, everything else got the treatment: running gear, subframes, arms — all powder coated. OEM is cool, but it’s not our style. This legend needed some Finesse.
There was only one choice for wheels. A set of BBS RS004s pulled straight from the stash, wrapped in fresh rubber. Ride height dialled in with a BC Racing coilover setup. Then came the interior. We already had the vision. RS2000 seats. Fishnet Recaros. Fresh door cards. New carpets. DS Trim Shack stitched it all together in pistachio leather — unreal. We dropped it into the car the day before the season opener. Loaded onto the trailer, still missing one final piece of glass. No stress. It was delivered straight to the venue and fitted on site. We always cut it fine. But we always pull it off.
