When Shane Ward bought his Mk2 Golf GTi in 2017, he knew the engine didn’t run, but cosmetically it looked in reasonable shape.
Back at home, he decided to jack the car up to take a good look underneath.
“All of a sudden I heard a creak, and the car went back down onto the floor again,” he remembers. “The jack went straight through the driver’s floor and it actually pushed the throttle pedal up. I thought ‘aah, here we go’.”
Fortunately, the rest of the body was solid, evidently patched up ahead of a respray from the car’s original red to bright blue metallic in the early 2000s.
“I had full paint done again last year,” says Shane, “and beforehand I pulled the arches off thinking I was going to be opening Pandora’s box, but they were clean as a whistle.”
With the floorplan welded up, it was just a question of getting the 1.8-litre, 16v engine up and running.
Golf GTi engine trouble
“The previous owner must have had trouble with the engine – it didn’t have any core plug, and it literally did not start at all,” he says. “The 16v is probably the worst one to buy if it doesn’t start, because trying to set up the fuel system on them is a nightmare.
“I fitted a new core plug, and set up the metering head, which I have no clue about but I managed to get it ticking over and running. Then I cleaned up the engine, which was looking really tired.”
After more than two years of welding and tinkering, the Golf was ready for its MoT, which it passed at the second time of asking.
“Ever since then, I’ve been doing bits and pieces,” says Shane. “It’s hard when you’ve got a family – you can’t spend all your money on your toys, your kids come first.”
When we meet Shane, he’s polishing the GTi on the MK2 Spares UK stand at the Whitenoise VW festival on the outskirts of Norwich.
Bitten by VW bug
Now 38, he explains how he was bitten by the Volkswagen bug as a 21-year-old, when he bought his first car, a limited edition, 1983, Mk1 Golf GX.
“I was late in passing my test,” he says, “because I was too busy partying in the city!”
While his mates were moving on to newer cars, Shane always hankered after the older models.
“My dad was always mechanically-minded and has always been into cars,” he says. “He’s got a Mk2 Cortina that he’s had since I was a kid.
“And with an old car, you just know when you’re driving along if something’s not right and generally, by certain sounds, you know what the issue is or where to be looking. You can work on them yourself, and it saves you a fortune. I’ve got no interest whatsoever in trying to fix newer cars.
“It’s also probably better for the environment to keep an older car on the road and keep using these parts that have been made years and years ago than it is to go out and buy an electric car. Keep recycling these cars and use these bits.
“Rather than just keep upgrading to the newest car, to make it better for everyone, just use the cars that are already out there.”
Boxy Mk1 Golf
The boxy shape of the Mk1 Golf appealed to 21-year-old Shane.
“I’d always liked them, and it was a good first car, I never had any issues with it at all,” he says. “It was my daily car, and it never let me down – it always started and got me where I wanted to go. I just enjoyed it, and I think that’s where the love for the VW came from.
“I enjoyed having something different from everyone else. I kept it for five or six years, and I did have the chance to buy it back recently but I looked at the pictures and it wasn’t what it was…”
There followed a variety of cars before Shane bought the Mk2 GTi: a Mazda MX-6 with a 2.5-litre V6 engine (“a lovely car to drive”); a Mk1 Golf GTi convertible (“the head gasket went and I was too scared to deep dive into it”); a BMW 328 SE; a Peugeot 306GTi convertible (“a bag of nails – the gearbox and clutch went at the same time”); and an Audi A6.
“The Audi was a good car, but then it cost me about £6,000 in five years just to keep it on the road,” he says. “It was constantly going wrong, and the car was nowhere near worth that – probably about £2,000 so I cut my losses, and then I bought the Mk2.”
Even though there was a gap of several years between the Mk1 Golf and the Mk2 Shane had never lost touch with his Volkswagen leanings.
“I’d been going to VW shows even though I didn’t have a VW,” he says. “I was actually taking the Audi to shows (it’s still VAG), but it wasn’t the same. I was parking that next to all these nice boxy classics and it just stood out like a sore thumb.
‘Let’s try a Mk2 Golf’
“I just wanted to go back into the classic car scene and I knew my way around VWs quite well. I’d had a Mk1 Golf, so I thought ‘let’s try a Mk2’. I’ve got a van for work, so I could have a classic as an occasional car.”
Shane paid £1,300 for the GTi, which now has 195,000 miles on the clock.
So how did it compare to the Mk1?
‘Hands down, the Mk2 is a superior car,” he says, “it’s pretty rapid, but in some ways the Mk1 was more exciting to me because it was my first car.
“If the Mk2 had been my first car I’d have been saying the same thing…
“This car is good for a nice little drive to a local show, but they get uncomfortable – it’s not like a new car where it drives you – you have to drive it.
“There are little things with that car that only I know. If someone else wanted to get in it and drive off they wouldn’t get very far.
“For example, if it’s hot it will drive all day, but if you stall at a set of traffic lights, it won’t start. “You need to wait for it to cool down for about two minutes, and then it’ll start.”
Such is the joy of running an older car.
New BBS replica wheels
One of the first changes Shane made to the Golf after he got it on the road was to the wheels, which were banded steel G60 wheels.
“It drove like a skateboard with glass wheels,” he says. “It was so uncomfortable and it was scraping on all the arches, which I didn’t like.
“I wanted it to look the part but still be drivable, so I got these 16in BBS replicas and they fit the car perfectly.”
When it came to giving the Golf fresh paint, there was only one choice for Shane.
“This blue is one of the colours that everyone loves,” he says. “I haven’t had one person come up to me and say they don’t like that colour. It looks nice, and it’s really good for pictures.”
As for the future, father-of-three Shane is planning on keeping the Golf for a very long time.
“Not just for me, also for my kids,” he says. “You get 15 years down the line and it will be tax and MoT exempt, insurance is shirt buttons, so it will cost them hardly anything to keep it on the road.
“Rather than leave my kids loads of money, they’ll have that car, they’ll keep that car, and they’ll use it, maybe for their own kids’ weddings.”
Chip off the old block
Nine-year-old son Alfie is especially interested in the GTi, and is something of a chip off the old block.
“I’m bringing him up how I was brought up,” says Shane, “to be hands on – if you want to use a tool, there you go, I’ll show you how. Don’t be scared of using your hands.
“He was given a little pit bike, and I said ‘before you pull that apart, leave it as it is so I can go over it and start eliminating issues’. Forty minutes later he’d stripped the whole thing – he’d taken the engine apart, the pistons and conrods out.
“The kids come knocking on my door for him to go and fix their push bikes.”
This winter, Shane is planning to pull the engine out, clean it up, and tidy up the engine bay.
“The engine is looking a bit tired again, and the engine bay is the only thing left to do,” he says.
You can be sure Alfie will be ready to offer a helping hand.
