The Volkswagen Golf GTi MK1

 


The Golf was never meant to be a performance car. It was supposed to be a small, fuel-efficient model – just the kind of thing people would be looking for in the aftermath of an oil crisis. Fortunately, VW engineer Alfons Löwenberg saw the potential and gathered together a small group of like-minded colleagues at Wolfsburg to begin work – in their spare time – on what they would call the Sport Golf. 

Their first prototype was in fact based on a Scirocco, not a Golf (the two cars shared the same underpinnings), but with a 100bhp version of the Audi 80 GT’s 1588cc engine, a barely silenced exhaust and race-car-firm suspension. It certainly showed what the platform was capable of, but the team decided it was also too extreme to present to management as a potential production model, so when the prototype was eventually demonstrated to VW’s top brass at the company’s Ehra-Lessien test facility it was in a far more civilised state of tune. It was still like nothing else on the road, though, and the bosses loved it.

‘The fastest Volkswagen ever’ made its public debut at the 1975 Frankfurt motor show. Amongst the details that marked it out from the basic Golfs were a chin spoiler (the only aerodynamic add-on, required to increase front-end downforce at high speed), black side stripes, black plastic wheelarch extensions and a red pinstripe around the grille. Inside there were sports seats with tartan upholstery, black headlining and a gearknob that resembled a golf ball – even though the Golf was named not after the sport but, as with many other VWs, a wind, in this case the Golfstrom or Gulf Stream. 

The car also wore new badges bearing the initials GTI, ‘GT’ standing for gran turismo, ‘I’ for injection (or, continuing the Italian, iniezione), referring to the adoption of Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection in place of the carburettor originally fitted to the Audi engine. Along with further mods that included larger inlet valves and a higher compression ratio, this enabled the 1.6-litre engine to produce 108bhp at 6100rpm and 103lb ft at 5000rpm. With a kerb weight of just 810kg, the GTI could get to 60mph in 9 seconds. Top speed was 110mph.