With the recent demise of Top Gear on the television, Channel 4’s motoring offering For the Love of Cars has taken up position as our Sunday evening car programme of choice.
Substitute elaborate road trips in Lamborghinis with a lap of the M25 in a Renault 5, and take into account the man behind the spanners, Ant Anstead, has considerably more talent when it comes to fixing things than the aforementioned trio of chaps; and it’s little wonder we were keen to get involved when they gave us a call about a Golf GTI they wanted to build…
The programme has now aired, and sure many of you will have seen how it came out; we knew about this build last year, but promised to keep tight lipped (whilst we kept sending the parcels!). So we were really chuffed with the end result when we finally saw it, and thought it was about time we told of our part in the programme.
Where Top Gear would happily drop a caravan on an old Volkswagen (or anything with a sub 6 second 0-60 sprint) the appeal of this programme is it caters for the average enthusiast – you don’t need a banker’s bonus to own a car similar (in fact you may even have one!)
The story starts with Walter Ainsworth who bought a Mk1 GTI to restore, but sadly due to ill health it sat for a little too long, and had to go. Ant Anstead swings into action, picks it up and plans the rebuild, deciding on a tribute to the ‘Pierburg’ sponsored Rally Car, as a nod to Walter’s rally mechanic past.
On screen and interspersed with the rebuild project is some harmless banter with co-presenter Philip Glenister; a few blasts in some other 80s hot hatches including a lap of the M25 in a Renault 5 turbo, paying tribute to street racing of the era.
We dealt with the guys at Evanta (Ant’s company – take a look!) from early November and supplied over £3k worth of parts in total for this rebuild – it’s safe to say this Mk1 Golf needed some love! There can’t be many parts from our catalogue that haven’t been fitted to be honest. The finished article is rather special though, and with an attention to detail that is often overlooked by other restoration type programmes it was even built to comply with historic rally regulations, so it can be used in anger too!
Only hours after being finished Walter had a final drive; and wasn’t afraid to put the engine he’d built to the test. The show had created something he knew he’d never get round to building, and his enjoyment and emotion is hard to ignore whilst watching it on screen.
For the love of Cars finish the job by putting the Golf into an auction in early January, at the Autosport show. And it sold… Whilst Walter was clearly gutted it had gone from his garage, there was a twist to the ending too… we’ll say no more, you’ll have to watch the episode!
If you want the chance to see it in the flesh, it’ll be appearing at the Mk1 Golf Owners Club AGM in July – see here for more details.
Andy