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Growing up, tuner VWs were the coolest cars out there to me. I spent hours rewatching the Hans Dahlback videos, and though Eurotuner was entertaining, it felt more legitimate when Road & Track did features with companies like Oettinger or HPA. Carter featured this Greek Golf, complete with Oettinger engine and full Zender bodykit and Turbo wheels. Some great translation errors like “modificated” and less than complete pictures don’t help the fear of buying a car from a country more financially screwed than the US in the Great Depression. I hope it’s legit though, as this would drop the jaws of any American VW enthusiasts. The marks against it have conspired to make the seller drop the price from $15k to $8,999 while driving it some 3km, a brutal 40% drop in what he thought he could get for it. Considering the prices we’re seeing on nice, stock Mk1s, if you can get this safely into the US for under $12k all in you’d have a great car and not a bad investment.
– NR
The below post originally appeared on our site March 4, 2014:
Which came first; the Mk.1 or the modified Mk.1? Of course it’s a rhetorical question, but it points to the popularity of the first water-cooled Volkswagens. Affordable, practical and plentiful, the aftermarket community thrived on providing all sorts of options to modify your Golf/Rabbit to all sorts of levels. With everything from body kits to performance modifications and interiors, there was seemingly no end to the possible permutations of combinations of parts to make your mass-produced hot hatch a bit hotter and different from everyone else. But weed through the plethora of upstarts, and perhaps the most respected name in the Mk.1 community is Oettinger. Though somewhat out of vogue today, we should not forget that Oettinger pioneered the twin cam, 16 valve engine for Volkswagen – in production as early as 1980, a full 7 model years before Volkswagen’s own 16V would enter service. They competed in motorsport as well, developing rally engines and everything from turbocharged diesels to a full 2 liter 16V motor developing 170 horsepower in 1984; Oettinger-equipped Golfs were quick enough to accelerate on par with production Porsche 928s of the period. Today, their legendary status in the Mk.1 community means that fully built, period models demand a premium even if they’re rare to come by:
While it’s not unusual to see the same car pop up more than once on these pages, usually we see new listings when over a year has passed. Yet the customized, Laguna Seca Blue supercharged 1992 Volkswagen Corrado SLC from last year is back with nearly the same listing and only a slight drop in price just over one year later with no claimed miles accrued. We also get effectively no updated photos and no interior shots. While it’s not to everyone’s taste, is $9,800 still too much for the amount of work that went in to this coupe?
The below post originally appeared on our site March 4, 2014:
Time for another Wednesday Wheels roundup – but this time, I’m looking at some great steering wheels I found. Check out the rare Volkswagen Petri model – or the equally rare Personal Audi Sport wheel. Then there are a brace of Momo Mercedes-Benz wheels including a neat original AMG wheel, and why not throw in a Ruf wheel for giggles even if it costs more than some cars? What’s your favorite?
As we’ve previously covered, the Volkswagen Corrado has been since new a popular tuning platform. Whether in supercharged G60 early form or the later VR6 model, avid enthusiasts snap these cars up and generally quickly set about customizing and personalizing the sporty coupes. On paper, the Corrado reads effectively just like a GTi – but to Volkswagen faithful, the coupe’s name carries so much more weight. Like a sports hero entering a local bar on game day, Volkswagen fans gasp, smile and utter expletives when they see a Corrado in any shape. Expensive when new and always holding more value than their brethren, they’ve remained somewhat elusive compared to the more mundane GTi and GLX models that ran alongside them. So, even if you find a model that isn’t 100% to your liking it may be worth investigating to see if you can re-customize it to your taste:
