Matty Palmer was working away from home as a marine engineer when he got some terrible news.
One of his close friends, who he had spoken to just the night before, had passed away.
“They’d told me I should launch a company about Golf Mk2s because of my passion for them, so that’s exactly what I did,” he says.
“When I found out that they’d passed, I got in my work van, jacked my job in, and started with £30 and a wooden shed in my dad’s back garden.”
That was in 2017 and, six years on, MK2 Spares UK is one of the largest companies of its type in England, based in an industrial unit complete with spray booth, detailing bay, and workshop facilities.
Golf Rallye, motoring dream
The business has helped the 37-year-old realise one of his motoring dreams – owning the stunning Golf Rallye you see in these pictures.
His cars have appeared in music videos with Tinie Tempah, Leanne Louise and Jamie T, while the standard of customer cars has gone from daily runners to “phenomenal” show cars.
“When I look back to where we started, and where we are now I have to pinch myself,” he says.
“I think ‘this is mine, you own this, you’ve come a long way’, and it doesn’t really sink in until people keep pointing it out to you.”
Matty grew up in a Volkswagen family, his parents owning Mk2 and Mk3 Golfs.
“My mum and dad always had Volkswagens, and dad knew the Vindis brothers, who owned a VW dealership,” he says.
“From a very early age my grandad used to walk me down most Sundays and show me the cars.”
Volkswagen apprenticeship
It was only natural that Matty would get a job working with Volkswagens, first doing work experience at a VW garage in Sawston, then landing an apprenticeship at the main VW dealer in Cambridge.
He became a fully-fledged mechanic and, via friends and work colleagues, increasingly got into the Volkswagen scene.
“My first car was a Polo 6N that I turned, quite drastically, into a show car that appeared on the front cover of Fast Car magazine,” he remembers. “This was the Max Power era, and I liked to do things a bit different in those days, so I cut off the front end and put a Mk4 Golf front on it – it looked like a baby Mk4 R32.
“So at 18 I was cruising around in a cut and shut Polo, but these are the things you did back then.”
But some of the older lads he knew were “bombing around in 16-valve Mk2 Golfs”.
“One of them had BMW 36 wheels off an M3 on his Mk2, and I remember seeing it coming up and down Haverhill High Street, and these moments all play a part in what I’m doing now,” he adds.
Matty started going to the GTi International shows, and he knew the time was right to get his own Mk2.
‘It was the car for me’
“It was the car for me,” he says. “The mentor who was teaching me my mechanics had a Bright Blue Metallic (BBM) Mk2, another lad also had a BBM, there was a green one, and then someone got a black one. They all steered me to the Mk2. For me, it was crisper than the Golf Mk1.”
His first Mk2 Golf was a 16-valve big bumper model, which cost him a then-whopping £188 a month to insure.
“I remember the amount because it was so much money,” he laughs. “Back then I was getting paid £800 a month, and the first big chunk was going out on insurance, which didn’t leave much for fuel.
“We were always driving around throughout East Anglia, down to Southend etc, to all these car shows and cruises.
“Back then we lived for cruising around, which is the bit I think we’ve lost.”
A new career in marine engineering, working all over the world including in the Caribbean, saw Matty fall out of the VW scene for a decade before that fateful conversation with his ill-fated friend.
“I was always away, sometimes up to nine weeks at a time,” he says, “and I missed a lot of friendship groups, and I missed the cars. It was the right time to come back into it.”
Garden shed business
He started his business in his dad’s garden shed on the appropriately named Golf Lane in West Runton on the north Norfolk coast, buying up Mk2 parts from owners who either didn’t have their car anymore or didn’t need the parts.
With enough profit in the bank, he rented a unit in Holt, but then came the dark times.
“There were points where I didn’t think it was going to make it,” he says. “But everyone has their dark moments in business, where you think ‘it’s make or break now’, and then Covid struck.
“Everybody went ‘right, I’ve got all this extra time, I’ve got this money, I’m going to finish that car’, and the business just expanded. It just went off. I had five people wrapping parcels to send to the postie. It was the turning point where it flipped in the other direction.”
Things got better when a friend asked him if he had a car for a music video, More Life by Torren Foot featuring Tinie Tempah & L Devine.
“He rang me and said that he’d been asked for a red Mk2 Golf, and there was only one man in the whole of Britain that he would think of, because when we were all younger and Tinie Tempah was a lot bigger we were all going mad for it in Mercy nightclub,” he smiles.
“To meet somebody like that, when you’ve bought their albums and you listened to them when you were younger, and then he’s right in front of you…it brings goose pimples to you, because it’s not normal.”
Matty’s red A-reg, which he still owns, appears in the video, which came out during lockdown in 2020.
“As a friend circle, we couldn’t really enjoy it, because we couldn’t go anywhere to hear it,” he says. “Then we were randomly at Santa Pod for one of the first events around lockdown, and they didn’t have any music on.
“But one of the lads managed to download it and got them to play it once. So we had that one moment to enjoy it.”
Publicity boost
With the publicity on YouTube, one thing led to another, and soon Matty’s cars featured in music videos with Leanne Louise and Jamie T, as well as in a feature film.
“I’m very humble to be doing any of this,” says Matty, who has owned more than 30 Mk2 Golfs.
“When I started with my wheelbarrow all sacked up, taking parts to the post office and back with no work van, with nothing, I didn’t see it going this far. It’s just gone mental and got bigger and bigger.”
It was in that first lockdown, with business booming, that Matty saw a Golf Rallye for sale on eBay.
“As a Mk2 owner, the Rallye is the ultimate,” he says. “I always wanted a Rallye when I was a kid, although I intended to bid on this one for my friend Hakan.
“We were sat on the sofas at the old Mk2 spares unit – he wanted a Rallye and he said ‘if you ever get hold of one, just bid on it on eBay, you know I’m good for it, I’ll have it’.
“So I bid and won this one for, I think, about £19,000. I randomly rang him up and said ‘you remember saying you wanted a Rallye, well I’ve just bought you one, you owe me £19,000, can you bank transfer me?’”
Hakan sent the money over, but when he received the registration documents through the post, things changed.
“Hanging around Haverhill as a kid, there was a Rallye that was used as an audio demonstrator car for an ICE company,” says Matty. “I used to walk past and buy audio from that shop, and the Rallye was often outside.
‘This needs to become your Rallye’
“When he got the logbook through, Hakan sent me a picture of it and said ‘how weird’s this?’ It was that Haverhill car, and he said ‘this needs to become your Rallye’. It was meant to be.”
Matty promptly repaid the money to Hakan.
The Golf Rallye was Volkswagen’s attempt to take on the Lancia Delta Integrale on the FIA world rally stage, with box-flared wheel arches, rectangular headlamps, four wheel drive, and a supercharged, 1763cc version of the 8-valve G60 engine, which produced 161bhp.
At least 5,000 road cars were needed for homologation purposes, and Volkswagen eventually hand-built 5,071 – all left hand drive.
It cost twice the price of a base Golf GTi when it was launched in 1989.
Matty’s Rallye arrived at his unit more modified than it is now, and with a 20-valve, BAM 1.8 turbo Audi TT engine that dates from 2001.
“The engine came from VW in Cambridge where it had been sitting on a pallet – it had done 60 miles,” he says. “It’s not done a lot since then, probably not even 500 miles.
“Not a lot of people like to have 20-valve turbos in the Rallye, they’d rather have them back to G60, which I think is a good thing.”
Return of the original engine
And this car will soon be back to not only a G60 engine, but the G60 engine with which it left the factory.
“Because I have contacts with other owners, I’ve managed to get the original G60 engine with the right codes for that car, so I’m very lucky to do that.” says Matty. “I’ve got that being built, so at the moment it’s going to stay as a 20-valve and then I plan on putting its original engine back in it.”
Since he started work on it, Matty has added Recaro seats, 16-inch BBS splits, and forked out £7,000 for a bare-metal respray in VW dark metallic grey, with “a good lacquer over the top to give it a good shine”.
“I’ve made it more OEM+, whereas the person before me had a different interior, different wheels, and blacked out indicators,” he says.
“It should have Sebrings on there, but I like this look. Most people have 17s on a Rallye, but I think the 16s are the right size. I’m quite heavy right-footed sometimes, and they make it brilliant for getting off the line.”
Not that Matty has had a chance to put that theory to the test, yet.
“That car was in bits a few months ago, and we’ve managed to get it from a sorry state to here in a seven-day turnaround,” he says, determined to get the car ready for the Whitenoise festival.
“I pushed myself to the limit so much, because I’m a family man and I have all these commitments to owners to make sure I get bits out to them in show season.
“For me to have a bit of a mishmash of work and play, for once in the past few years, has been so healthy. Now I can look back and go ‘I did that, we did that’, loads of us jumped in and did stuff’.
“All I’ve driven this car is off the recovery truck, to the stand, and down to see you guys, which is not even two miles.
“It’s not finished to the standard I’m happy with, but it’s on its way. It won’t be long.”
Original state
Putting the car back to close to its original state will protect its value, but if Matty was going to make the car purely to his own tastes, he’d paint it in his favourite BBM.
“And I’d probably R32 turbo it, because I like the VR6 noise,” he adds.
The Golf Rallye – or Rallye Golf to some – is now a very rare beast in the UK, with only 23 registered for road use according to HowManyLeft.
And this one is most definitely not for sale.
“It won’t go anywhere – other vehicles that can leave before that does,” says Matty, who sold a BBM VR6 to raise money for a deposit on the new unit in north Norfolk.
“I had to let a few nice items go for the unit, but I never let this Rallye go. Hakan, who is like a brother to me, stepped in to help with the financials so I could keep the Rallye.
“He’s helped me keep something I thought I was going to have to let go, which is what I’ve worked for.”
Popular Mk2 Golf
The future for Mk2 Spares looks rosy, with the popularity of the Mk2 Golf on the rise.
“The lads I used to hang around with are now back into Mk2s again,” says Matty. “They’ve all decided they loved them and missed them, their kids have grown up and they want to rebuild a Mk2 again.
“It’s now very popular, and very desirable. People realise they can get the bits, they are out there and available, unlike some other classics. And the prices for the parts are still reasonable.
“I buy up all Mk2 Golfs I can physically afford, and park them up at my unit as an investment for us as a company. We don’t break cars, we’ll sell it as a project car no matter how bad it is – but we will tell you how bad it is.
“We’re not one of these companies where we’ll sell you a dream and not see you through to the end, and I’ll stay as part of a project with somebody as best I can.”
And there are some very special cars on the horizon, coming to a show near you soon.
“Hakan is bringing some ultimate cars in the next two years,” he says. “We have got some very unique cars that are now going to be brought to the table, ridiculous in engineering skills – watch this space.”
