Fuzz Townshend takes us behind the scenes of the restos featured in the latest series of Car SOS. This week it’s time for a round of Golf…
Some reasonably ordinary, everyday cars seem to capture the imaginations of future generations of buyers straight from the showroom.
By this, I mean the doe eyed, thousand-yard staring admirers who are still years distant from being able to drive a car on the road legally, let alone afford to actually buy one.
The VW Golf MkII managed to trump the original concept by a country mile when it first materialised in 1983. Even I, speaking as an inveterate fan of far earlier cars, could see that there was something very special about the MkII’s chunkier, modernistic looks and the GTI’s styling details made it perhaps the most attainable four-wheeled icon of its time.
However those potential drivers wrung the life out of them when they got their hands on the car of their dreams before parking them up as future projects for optimistically misty-eyed home restorers whose thousand-yard stares were now more of a quizzical 10m squint.
Former bus driver Darren had reached a moment in life when his children had grown and flown and he was able to treat himself to a late 1980s project car. It needed plenty of work with welding, fabrication and mechanical, electrical and interior restoration all awaiting. This was never going to be a quick return to the road but Darren taught himself the skills needed to achieve steady progress and a fantastic level of finish. All was proceeding magnificently – then everything changed when he was out for a stroll one day…
The Car SOS team were very impressed by Darren’s work when we got the car back to the workshop and put it onto the vehicle lift to check its condition. He’d clearly adopted the approach of ensuring that the car’s bodywork was up to scratch before tackling the arguably more straightforward mechanical and electrical issues, although it looked as though he’d investigated these for planning purposes.
