The first time you fell in love...with a GTI.

[randomhobo130]

I was shopping for a WRX originally but the clutch just felt so different when I test drove. Had a 5MT Jetta S at the time so I decided to take a GTI for a test drive on a whim. Mk7.5 was the first time I tried one (I live near Canada and they had them before the states did). The first time I threw it into gear, I knew I was getting one. Got a brand new '17 SE a week later. Haven't stopped loving it since.

 

[SouthFL_Mk7.5]

Have always been a manual transmission rwd or awd car guy. My first car was a 1st gen turbo fwd diamond star motors product and I never wanted to go back to fwd since owning that car (torque steer, understeer, etc.)

Decades go by and several pony cars, awd cars, sports cars later, I find myself with a surgically repaired left knee. Read up on pdk, dsg transmissions and realized this is the way to go forward. A few years ago I was at the international auto show and sat in a GTi and was very impressed by the performance oriented layout of the controls and the overall fit and finish and knew that the dsg on this car had great reputation.

Last year, after a decade away from track days, I went to see the 12 hours of Sebring and the track bug bit me once again. I searched for affordable ways to get back to the track with a daily driver and the GTi with DSG fulfilled the requirements I needed to meet (performance, dsg, affordability, comfort). Went to test drive one and drove out of the dealer with it! I bought it with the intention of hitting a few track days with it, then gifting it to my son as his first car. The problem now is that I love it so much, I'm going to have to get myself another GTi (or R)!

 

[Oscar LaVista]

For me it was when I discovered it while playing through some of the beginner races in Gran Turismo 2 way back in 1999 on the original Playstation.
The fact that it was one of the less expensive cars in the game meant that most players picked one as their "main" car early on and spent a significant portion of the game supe'ing it up until it was a monster on those GT2 tracks and you eventually fell in love with it.

Gran Turismo 2 - Volkswagen Golf IV GTI 1.8T HD Gameplay

What about you guys? When was the first time you saw a GTI and knew that you had to have one?

I turned 18 in 1985. If my first GTI love didn't happen when I first read about the Mk1, it was the first time I drove one. It only took me 34 years to pull the trigger...

 

[Striker23]

Drove my friends 337 when he was too drunk to drive one night and couldn’t say no. Was blown away. When I got back fro Iraq years later I bought a yellow 20th and loved it for years. Sold it for an evo eventually but I’ve always loved the GTI. Best all around daily for the money.

 

[hotbascosauce]

I was a Honda kid throughout high school (Class of 2007). Accord, Prelude, Integra, Civic.... Then I got into MR2s. Not exactly the best daily drivers. After this point I pretty much always had at least 2 cars at any given time. A project car, and a daily driver... that was usually also a project car. I found a low mileage MK3 2.0 GTi for incredibly cheap, about $1300 w/ 80k miles in the middle of nowhere near the Washington Coast. Older gentleman was selling his son's college car who hadnt touched it in years. It had quite a bit of Neuspeed parts on it and a sound system that would have been impressive back in the day. It was my first VW. It wasnt a quick car by any means but it was better than the Civics and Integras I was used to. Sold it and went through a bunch of BMWs. E34, E46s, E36, E31, E39. My friends B5 A4 got backed into in a parking lot and was totaled out. He bought it back from insurance and sold it to me for $1000. The bumper snapped back on, and I found a used hood on craigslist for $100. Superglued the headlight tabs back on. It was good to go. It was APR stage 2, and had some bouncy VMAXX coils on it. My roommate had just gotten a MK6 GTI sometime after. I loved driving that thing. He wasnt even a car guy. After a few years, I got tired of driving beaters and I went to the VW dealer as the MK7 had just come out. I had my heart set on a 4door grey manual S w/ LP. We looked at the leasing options and it was within my budget after selling the B5 A4 for about $4000. Then.... I called my insurance, and because my driving record was so bad (speeding tickets and a past DUI) they quoted me $740 PER MONTH. Dreams shattered. Heart broken. I needed a car, and luckily my friends brother was selling his MK5 GTI which was already bagged. Car was stock otherwise. First mod was wheels, and then Unitronic Stage 2. I drove that car through my last 2 years of college. I got promoted at work to being the Sales Manager after graduating and my boss told me there was no way I could be taking out clients in my "lowrider." Sold the the MK5 and bought a 6spd B7 A4 Avant S-Line. Also got the Unitronic Stage 2 treatment. My wife was getting tired of her Touareg and wanted a new car. I was swaying her into buying a MK7.5 GTI. Fell in love with the MK7 all over again. She ended up buying a new WRX. To show her the error in her ways, I immediately sold my B7 A4. I had bought it with 120k miles and it was pushing 165k miles now, but still ran like a champ as I had just replaced the entire top end of the engine the year prior. I had my heart set on getting a MK7.5 Golf R, but none of the local dealers would let me test drive one or budge on the price. A dealer gave me $5000 off a brand new 19 GTI SE. This put the gap between the GTI and the R at $12k. Easy decision there. Fun fact. All 3 of my GTI's have been black.

 

[uberdot]

I was a Honda kid throughout high school (Class of 2007). Accord, Prelude, Integra, Civic.... Then I got into MR2s. Not exactly the best daily drivers. After this point I pretty much always had at least 2 cars at any given time. A project car, and a daily driver... that was usually also a project car. I found a low mileage MK3 2.0 GTi for incredibly cheap, about $1300 w/ 80k miles in the middle of nowhere near the Washington Coast. Older gentleman was selling his son's college car who hadnt touched it in years. It had quite a bit of Neuspeed parts on it and a sound system that would have been impressive back in the day. It was my first VW. It wasnt a quick car by any means but it was better than the Civics and Integras I was used to. Sold it and went through a bunch of BMWs. E34, E46s, E36, E31, E39. My friends B5 A4 got backed into in a parking lot and was totaled out. He bought it back from insurance and sold it to me for $1000. The bumper snapped back on, and I found a used hood on craigslist for $100. Superglued the headlight tabs back on. It was good to go. It was APR stage 2, and had some bouncy VMAXX coils on it. My roommate had just gotten a MK6 GTI sometime after. I loved driving that thing. He wasnt even a car guy. After a few years, I got tired of driving beaters and I went to the VW dealer as the MK7 had just come out. I had my heart set on a 4door grey manual S w/ LP. We looked at the leasing options and it was within my budget after selling the B5 A4 for about $4000. Then.... I called my insurance, and because my driving record was so bad (speeding tickets and a past DUI) they quoted me $740 PER MONTH. Dreams shattered. Heart broken. I needed a car, and luckily my friends brother was selling his MK5 GTI which was already bagged. Car was stock otherwise. First mod was wheels, and then Unitronic Stage 2. I drove that car through my last 2 years of college. I got promoted at work to being the Sales Manager after graduating and my boss told me there was no way I could be taking out clients in my "lowrider." Sold the the MK5 and bought a 6spd B7 A4 Avant S-Line. Also got the Unitronic Stage 2 treatment. My wife was getting tired of her Touareg and wanted a new car. I was swaying her into buying a MK7.5 GTI. Fell in love with the MK7 all over again. She ended up buying a new WRX. To show her the error in her ways, I immediately sold my B7 A4. I had bought it with 120k miles and it was pushing 165k miles now, but still ran like a champ as I had just replaced the entire top end of the engine the year prior. I had my heart set on getting a MK7.5 Golf R, but none of the local dealers would let me test drive one or budge on the price. A dealer gave me $5000 off a brand new 19 GTI SE. This put the gap between the GTI and the R at $12k. Easy decision there. Fun fact. All 3 of my GTI's have been black. View attachment 167635View attachment 167636

Best story I’ve read all day ?

 

[cbenjes]

I had my '99 TDI New Beetle at NGP in Aberdeen, MD in for a timing belt change and the owner, Dave Graf, says to me, if you like your chipped TDI so much, you should take a test drive in a new Mk6 GTI. It's amazing what we can do for the performance in one of those for very little money. I took his advice, test drove one and bought a 2011 in January 2011 about a month later. 7 years later bought a very-low-mileage Mk7 Autobahn. Never looked back! Thanks Dave!

 

[imthanick_a]

Getting ready to graduate college and I'd been saving up for a car for 3 years. Started to research on Car and Driver and started reading up on the MK7 GTI which was one of their long term loaners at the time. The more I read and the more pictures I saw, the more I liked it. Fun, practical, affordable, and highly mod-able. The rest is history

 

[Gptuners]

Oh, she knows. All she has to do it put on her naughty librarian glasses.

I think my wife has the same ones... We must have similar taste. ?

I turned 18 in 1985. If my first GTI love didn't happen when I first read about the Mk1, it was the first time I drove one. It only took me 34 years to pull the trigger...

I lived in Germany in the 80s as a kid , and the semi local Rallye legend, Jochi Kleint was driving a GTI. Now that I have my first GTI, I had the thought to bring back his livery, but I think at 38y years old I should be a grown up and not build a daily driver rally replica. ?

 

[imthanick_a]

I think my wife has the same ones... We must have similar taste. ?


I lived in Germany in the 80s as a kid , and the semi local Rallye legend, Jochi Kleint was driving a GTI. Now that I have my first GTI, I had the thought to bring back his livery, but I think at 38y years old I should be a grown up and not build a daily driver rally replica. ?

I see zero issues in it. If you have the means and desire to do it, go for it! I have a coworker in his late 30's who drives his purpose-built track miata with homemade wings and diffusers and giant number stickers all over it to work every day the weather allows

 

[bentin]

I think my wife has the same ones... We must have similar taste. ?


I lived in Germany in the 80s as a kid , and the semi local Rallye legend, Jochi Kleint was driving a GTI. Now that I have my first GTI, I had the thought to bring back his livery, but I think at 38y years old I should be a grown up and not build a daily driver rally replica. ?

If you straighten the corners like that at every opportunity, why not?

 

[Gimpster]

My first car was a 1981 VW Jetta 2dr, which I blew the engine up on eventually. I then got a black 1984 GTI and loved it very much, wish I could find old pictures of it. Did Koni's, header, cam... few other things. Was fun for what it was.

This was the mid 1990s.

 

[ourlee]

Penn State, mid 80s, some dude drove up college ave and back on beaver in one of these over and over. I saw hm everyday. Did he ever go to class? Who knows, I loved his car.

 

[VadGTI]

Story time.

In 1989, I was 9 years old as my family escaped the former Soviet Union and began making its way to the US via Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Italy. The USSR was bereft of foreign cars (unless one spent time in Moscow in the zone open to foreigners) and our city had an air base and was thus a city closed to foreigners. Thus, prior to us leaving, the closest I got to a non-Soviet vehicle was a Skoda visiting from Czechoslovakia.

So, we leave in the middle of the night, catch a train through Poland and end up at a train station in Vienna, Austria. We got off the train and onto a bus that took us to Gablitz, where our hotel-for-wayward immigrants was (At this time, anyone Jewish leaving the USSR on a permanent exit visa was required to go through Austria and Italy, where their final destination was determined at various consulates and organizations in Rome).

There are some things I remember from Gablitz. The creek behind the hotel (it smelled terrible, very sewage-ey). The supermarket called Mondo a couple of blocks away (where I saw a drunk guy fall off an escalator and crack his head open a couple of feet away from me, resulting in blood spraying on my hand-me down shoes. The fact that the hotel owner was named Michael and had a blue W124 Mercedes.

But, the most important thing I remember was this… Gablitz was where I first laid eyes on the Mk2 Golf GTI.
We had just stepped off the bus across the road from the hotel when I spotted it. Black, with single-round headlights. As it passed by, a young child’s head was poking out of the sunroof. This is the first time most of us had seen a sunroof. “How is he doing that?!?,” my grandma exclaimed. My dad, a worldly man who obviously knew things, somewhat patronizingly responded: “It’s a sunroof, mom.”

This was to become my dream car. I was in love with the Mk2 Golf GTI
Flash forward to 1996 America. I had been working my ass off since the age of 12 to get my “Golf” money. I sold candy door to door after school (“Hi, I’m from the Junior Work Program, and what this program does is help kids stay off drugs and out of gangs… wait, no, I’m lying… What this program does is let me keep $1 for every box of $5 candy I sell, with the remainder going to a dodgy Aussie fellow named Marc who drives 20 of us around all around town in a commercial van with no windows and a smelly couch inside that we newly-arrived immigrant kids all fight for.”), worked for far below minimum wage at my aunt’s medical lab pushing paper every summer, washed windows for $0.50 in the Smart and Final parking lot near my house, passed out Thai restaurant flyers door to door, etc.

Now I was closing in on 16 and had $4200 of my hard-earned money to spend on a car. I had my permit, but didn’t have my license. I began buying AutoTraders and Recyclers (Thursday – publishing day – couldn’t come soon enough). I still have many of them, too. Stacked away in the garage, potential car purchases circled, reminders of a dream destroyed…

In early 1996, my mom comes home from work and tells me her co-worker is moving out of state in the next few months and he’ll be selling his car.
“What kind of car is it, mom?”
“Um… It’s black… I think.”
“But… What KIND is it?”
“I don’t know. But, he says it’s reliable and a lot of fun.”

Great… You can imagine what went through my mind. Black and reliable? Probably something bizarre like a Mercury Lynx or a Ford Escort EXP (yes, yes, I know everyone reading this would kill for one of those now, but this was SoCal in 1996, people!). Wait, reliable? Corolla? Civic? No, definitely a Corolla.

So, I ask my mom if she could have him write down what kind of car it was. Not that I didn’t trust her, but you can’t expect much from a woman who referred to the Dodge Viper as “the frog-car” every time she saw one…

A week later, she brings home a piece of paper… And here’s what it said:
“1991 VW GTI 16v, black. Neuspeed springs, Bilstein shocks, K&N filter, exhaust, Momo steering wheel, Soundstream Amp, Orion subwoofer – $4000”

I’m pretty sure I lost all control of my body functions, right then and there. This was the one! This was fate! This was happening! When could I have it? Now? Right now? Can we go now? I want! No, we couldn’t go now… We had to wait until he was actually moving. I took the piece of paper, and stuck it into a picture frame. Then, I nailed it to the door to my room. Any friend who came over for the next 30 days or so got an earful of “GTI”… I ate GTI, drank GTI, slept GTI. My life was GTI. And in June of 1996, my mom got the word. The car was available, and it was mine. The guy was bringing it over in the next coupe of days… I don’t think I slept at all those couple of days.

Finally, it was time… GTI-Day… My father was on the phone with the guy, giving him directions. My best friend, Allen, was over. He was one day older, and neither of us could legally drive until early July, but he already had a car waiting for him. Now, I’d have one waiting for me, and I wanted him to see it in its full glory.
I could hear my dad’s side of the phone conversation. Wait, what’s this? My heart dropped… “We’re not going to get the car. Yeah, sorry about that… It’s not going to work.”

My heart dropped… Why was I not getting my car?

Turns out, it was a manual (of course, I knew it was, but my parents didn’t).

“What? What? Huh? It’s my money! I earned it!”
“Well, you’re not even 16, and if you were, you still can’t have it in your name. We want you to have a car that every member of the family can use in an emergency.”

I’m pretty sure I remember losing it and possibly crying right then and there. And if I cried, I had a right to. The car… MY CAR…was on its way over and I had the cash in hand.

But, remember, Allen was there… There to hear it all. And Allen was a smart dude. Remember, Allen already had a car waiting for him. It was a hand-me-down from his dad, a ’90 Nissan Stanza GXE. And it was automatic. Allen didn’t want to drive a Stanza. What kid wanted an automatic Stanza in SoCal in the mid-90’s? Like I said, Allen was a smart one… He looked at my parents and said “I have 1990 Stanza, it’s an automatic, and he can have it for $4000.”

My parents looked at each other… And that was that… I had a Stanza…
That… right there… was the death of my dream.

Me and the Stanza (holding a Clarion detachable face), 1997:

Finally, when I turned 18 and could actually have a car titled in my own name, I went to the bank, pulled out about 7k in savings and got myself a lightly-used Mk3 GTI.

The Mk3, circa 1999-2000, somewhere between LA and Santa Barbara:

Since then, I’ve had many, many cars. From a bunch of Miatas, various JDM stuff (S13, AE86, etc.), M3s (E30 and E36), various VWs, a Skyline and now a 993. My current Mk7.5 GTI is GTI #3 for me. But I never did get that Mk2…

The current 993. Still not a replacement for the perfect Mk2 GTI 16v .

 

[Square1]

I had numerous VWs years ago and then I finally got my hands on the GTI I always wanted around 21 years ago. I had to get rid of the car due to health reasons so in 2017 I bought a base GTI as a second car to have some fun with and I love this car now. I don't drive too much but enough to have fun.

Now after dumping my Porsche fund into it I have the car I wanted when I was 20.