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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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Mk1 golf GTI campaign, escort rs1600i...add in a mk1 Astra GTE and you've got a early 80s hot hitch dream garage right there. I'm trying to find local people with 80s hot hatches so I can maybe one day get them together for a photo shoot, I loved that era! Every week I'd spend my pocket money on car mags in the early 80s and the hot-hatch arms race was so exciting! |
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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Taken earlier today, looks lovely and shiny.  Today was a great day. I've got a decently thick history file for the car and after doing a bit of digging online it turned out that the second owner, Edward, was still living at the address on the photocopy of the V5 I've got so I thought I'd see if he was in. He was. I spent a good few hours with him, he was so surprised to see it when I pulled up! He owned it from March 1990 to April 1999.  That's him sat in it. He remembers the car really well. I took him out in it, he loved it - his grin was huge! He bought it when the insurance paid out for an 1800 GTI he owned that got written off by a stolen car hitting him in it, he was lucky to walk away - how he wasn't killed I don't know:  |
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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He's a lovely fella, I'll visit him in it again some time. Whilst chatting he disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a photo for me:  A212JCW, in 1991. The oldest photo I have of it. It was so weird to see a car that I've owned for 17 years in a photo taken so long ago. A very special moment, I was so made up! He was able to answer quite a few questions and things I'd always wondered about it, I'll be spending an hour or so later writing it up to go in the history file before I forget it all! |
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Last Edit: May 1, 2019 20:17:48 GMT by DarrenW
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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Finally hit the 1000 mile mark on the new engine, so time for an oil change. By oil change, I mean drain most of the old stuff on to the driveway before almost forgetting the sump plug when refilling with new.  Interestingly, after shopping around a little bit, the cheapest decent oil for it was from the local VW Dealer, £5 cheaper than Halfords and my local motor factor. Then off to Stanford Hall. Over to Manchester to team up with Savannah 67:  And an enjoyable convoy down. I think the MFA trip computer may have lost some accuracy in the years since 1983, I doubt I was getting 62mpg at 70mph on the M6...  Some lovely cars there over the weekend, it wasn't half cold overnight though! Our camping area toward the end of Saturday:  Pretty sure mine was the only tintop Mk1 in the camping field. I awarded myself a beer-shaped trophy. Group photo at the end of a great time:  And a cruise home!  It isn't going to move much for the next week or so... But a week on Friday we're off to Austria. 1000+ miles each way, it's going to be a real adventure! |
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Stu
Posted a lot
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Wow - just caught up with this, you've been busy, Darren and the car looks great! Did Edward own it before Chris in Latchford that I bought it from then? Great to be able to take the car back to show him, not surprised he was shocked to see you pull up!   Enjoy the Austria trip  |
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'89 BMW E30 325i Sport, '04 MINI Cooper S, '09 Volvo V70 D5
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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Time for some Wörthersee photos... We left on the Friday evening, heading to Harwich for the overnight ferry to Holland. Pretty uneventful, I never sleep well on boats so I wasn't really ready for the super early alarm call but the breakfast certainly helped. Lots of motorway miles on the Saturday, I wasn't driving the Mk1 so it was really good to actually see it on the road in front of me, lots of this sort of thing:  Some great cars in the underground parking at our overnight hotel stop in a lovely place just outside Munich,   As we were about to cross in to Austria:  Near to a quick fuel stop along the way, the two cars together:  And finally, after nearly 1000 miles of driving, the mountain view that gets me so excited every year - NEARLY THERE  |
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Last Edit: Jun 7, 2019 10:28:58 GMT by DarrenW
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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Met a twin at the services just up the road from Wörthersee on the way in, absolutely lovely.  |
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Last Edit: Jun 7, 2019 10:33:44 GMT by DarrenW
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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Wow - just caught up with this, you've been busy, Darren and the car looks great! Did Edward own it before Chris in Latchford that I bought it from then? Great to be able to take the car back to show him, not surprised he was shocked to see you pull up! Enjoy the Austria trip Thanks Stu (I'm sure I've spoken to you since you posted this!) - yeah, that's who Chris bought it from before you and then me |
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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Another friend along the way, this is outside Fruhmanns - www.fruhmann.at/ , which serves absolutely magnificent meat platters, it's almost worth the trip alone!  The car got a lot of attention, a typical day might involve parking up somewhere - Reifnitz in this case, or Faakersee, Ossiachersee or any of the other main spots in the area - and watching the reactions of others. Usually it's the right hand drive that catches the eye, and/or the "weird" RHD wiper arrangement...   Another friend (there are going to be lots of pics like this!)  |
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I have to say, that Blue car up there does look lovely...
*whistles while trying to look inconspicuous*
Haha...
I still can't believe how well the little Mk1 did... practically faultless....
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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The whole rhythm of the event was different for us this year. Two cars, different house/apartment (we'd stayed in the previous one every year since 2006) in a different town on the lake. Also, with taking the Mk1 being such a significant thing for us we wanted lots of photos of it in good places, which has meant I took fewer pics of everything else. I got some lovely pics of the car though, this sort of thing:  I've got enough desktop wallpapers of it to last me a long time... |
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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I have to say, that Blue car up there does look lovely... *whistles while trying to look inconspicuous* Haha... I still can't believe how well the little Mk1 did... practically faultless.... Aye, the blue one goes well and the air conditioning in it works a lot better than the open window of the Mk1 |
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I have to say, that Blue car up there does look lovely... *whistles while trying to look inconspicuous* Haha... I still can't believe how well the little Mk1 did... practically faultless.... Aye, the blue one goes well and the air conditioning in it works a lot better than the open window of the Mk1 Especially when the window winder is broken  haha |
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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The Villacher Alpenstrasse is a magnificent mountain road - www.villacher-alpenstrasse.at/va/en/index - that we'd never driven before. Confident that the engine was well and truly run in by this point I absolutely thrashed the little thing as hard as I could up it... Squealing tyres around the hairpins, red lining through the gears, virtually melting the brake pads (it absolutely stank on the way down! )... Nowhere near as quick as rainking 's 300bhp Golf R in front but I had the biggest grin in the world on my face.   The view from the top is incredible.  What's almost as incredible is the sound of BMW M3s, M4s, Audi RS3s, RS6s, Lamborghinis, Porsches, R32 Golfs and all manner of machinery barking their way up and down. What an amazing spectacle. |
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The Villacher Alpenstrasse is a magnificent mountain road - www.villacher-alpenstrasse.at/va/en/index - that we'd never driven before. Confident that the engine was well and truly run in by this point I absolutely thrashed the little thing as hard as I could up it... Squealing tyres around the hairpins, red lining through the gears, virtually melting the brake pads (it absolutely stank on the way down! )... Nowhere near as quick as rainking 's 300bhp Golf R in front but I had the biggest grin in the world on my face. You definitely sounded like you were having a lot more fun.... We were too busy trying not to bend our chocolate wheels.... What's almost as incredible is the sound of BMW M3s, M4s, Audi RS3s, RS6s, Lamborghinis, Porsches, R32 Golfs and all manner of machinery barking their way up and down. What an amazing spectacle. That was indeed nearly as awesome as the scenery.... *bwaaaarp* |
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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The Granite Golf is a scultpure that was donated by VW to the village of Reifnitz back in 1987 in honour of the event. It's practically mandatory to get a photo of either yourself or your car with it, so why not...  There's a video here of the ceremony back in '87. Awesome: |
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Last Edit: Jun 7, 2019 11:21:40 GMT by DarrenW
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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This is quite a significant photo for me.  RE GTI 80 and RE GTI 83 park in that spot every year, and I think have done every year we've been going. Every year I walk past the red one, have a good look at it and mumble something about "one day mine will be here" with a distant, wistful look in my eye (probably the beer tbh). Of course, this year was different. So as soon as I saw them we headed over, I found the owner of the red one and took photos. Now I'll never have that "one day..." melancholy again. I think this was maybe the point that it actually began to feel real after fifteen years! |
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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Also in the same place we met a German Pirelli edition Mk1 - the equivalent of my Campaign. Lots of time spent comparing notes, and everyone wants a sit in a right hand drive one... (that's me with the red camera strap)  |
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Last Edit: Jun 7, 2019 11:36:38 GMT by DarrenW
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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Another day, another photo opp... Some dedicated sleuthing (not by me) found the location for a couple of photos we'd seen on Instagram so off we went. Luckily we were the only ones there when we arrived, there was a decent queue building as we left and it was beginning to rain. Perfect timing.  |
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1983 VW Mk1 Golf GTI Campaign DarrenW
@darrenw
Club Retro Rides Member 74
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Another twin, if it looks as though I had a bit of an obsession with getting photos of it with other Mars Red Mk1s you may be right...  |
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haha