Britain’s Best Bangers
Some £1000 bargain vehicles stand out more than others. Craig Cheetham goes Golfing and comes out above par.
Volkswagen Golf MKIV.
Blue dashboard lights. If ever there was a reason to love the VW Golf MKIV, there it is. The instruments of VW’S upscale hatchback were backlit in a soft indigo colour with red needles. As trivial as that may seem, it was enough to tempt quite a few buyers into parting with their cash for the Volkswagen over its main rivals.
As well as the swish dashboard, which is more 1990s retro than upmarket suave in a modern context, the MKIV had what marketing folk liked to describe as “perceived quality.” In other words, a sense of being very well-made, even if it wasn’t. There was certainly no faulting the interior, which fitted together with absolute precision, complete with soft-touch plastics and chunky column stalks. The exterior was handsome, too: instantly identifiable as a Golf, despite being significantly different to the MKIII, with which it shared its bulkhead.
That feeling of well-being made the Golf MKIV a very pleasant car in which to travel, even though some contemporary road-testers criticised its lack of dynamic sharpness. This was the company that had given us the awesome Golf GTIS MKI and MKII, but in the MKIV those three letters were little more than a trim level, especially if you went for the weedy 115bhp 2.0-litre, which was a GTI for estate agents rather than track-day junkies.
There were some sporty models, though. The 20-valve 1.8T GTI was no slouch, the V5 was suitably quirky and the V6 4-MOTION certainly knew how to shift, while the later R32 was one of the most epic performance Golfs ever.
It was the mainstream models that were the volume sellers, though, with the excellent PD diesels being particularly popular. Indeed, the GT TDI 150 was one of the first diesel performance cars, complete with a six-speed gearbox and 148bhp output. There was also a useful, albeit slightly bland, estate version, along with a cabriolet, though the latter was little more than a reskinned MKIII built externally by Karmann rather than VW.
Over time, the MKIV proved that perceived quality and true quality were very different things. Some of the more technologically-advanced models (the V5 and V6 particularly) proved troublesome, though the eight-valve ‘plodders’ using the old 1.6- and 2.0-litre engines closely related to those in the Golf MKII were as reliable as you’d expect.
Diesels aside, it’s the variants that attracted the most criticism when new that are the most desirable today. A 2.0 GTI 8v is quick enough to hold its own in modern traffic, extremely comfortable, well-appointed and decent enough to drive, provided you don’t expect too much of it: 200,000 miles is a walk in the park for a wellmaintained example. In ‘bangernomics’ terms, it’s probably our favourite MKIV for its sheer simplicity to own, as well as the fact that it still looks pretty good. TDI models are also sturdy beasts, although smart examples with sensible miles are hard to come by today.
While MKIVS still look pretty fresh, there are a couple of areas prone to rot, with the rear arches, sills and front wings being the most corrosionprone areas, not helped by the fact that VW used foam soundproofing material to aid refinement. Over time, the foam traps moisture, especially if splashguards work loose, with inevitable consequences. Other more trivial problems include seat bolsters that wear out quickly on models with velour trim – cheaper cloth fares better – and rear wipers that pack up thanks to water leaking through the wiper mount and into the electrics.
Despite these niggles, the Golf MKIV still seems like a high-quality car and one that can actually feel quite special, despite the fact you can pick up a good one for well under £1000 these days. It’s a classy banger.