2001 Volkswagen Golf GTi from Australia and New Zealand - Comments

Nothing.

This car is fantastic. In Australia there is only one choice for the GTI, 1.8T 5 door. This suits me fine although a V6 4motion might get the performance marks to 10/10. Although Golf 4motions are not available down under. Damn.

GTI features are pretty good compared to its competition. Recaro seats look and feel great. Blue dash lights are a hoot. Sunroof as a standard feature is welcome, if unexpected in this class.

Resale and build quality are very high. The fit and finish of the car is first class. The car just feels so safe and smooth. Have bettered the claimed top speed by 4km/h to achieve 220km/h and was concentrating too much to notice much else! However at a more sedate 160km/h, or 100mp/h, the car feels so quiet and smooth, and with cruise control it is well suited to highway driving.

Performance from a standing start could be better. However if that was all I wanted I would have bought a WRX like everybody else in Australia! Compared to a WRX the GTI is better built, has higher standards of safety, resale is slightly higher, about 75% cheaper to insure, and GTIs are far more unique.

Agree 110% with this review. A good friend of mine has a GTi and it feels like a $100,000 car not a $40,000 car. As for performance it is more than adequate and it doesn't take much to boost power considerably and get close to WRX performance, however the WRX will never have the look, feel,quality of the Golf GTi. I think this is a vastly underrated car in Australia.

Hi, I'm the original author of this thread and my car is now 2 years old and has 46,000km under its belt. I have also completed some minor modifications to the car which may be worth sharing with you.

First mod is the addition of a Unichip ECU which has increased power from 110kw to roughly 140kw, which in turn means the car is smoother, has more torque, has decreased turbo lag (which was already quite minimal btw) and of course has made the car quicker. As an obvious example of the increase in power I have been able to reduce 0-100 times from the 8.5sec for stock to around 7.4sec with the Unichip. For a variety of reasons I don't think I'd use Unichip again, but there are quite a few alternatives available in Australia if you wanted to chip your GTI. Alternatives would be Oettinger, GIAC, Wetterauer, MTM and I believe APR has just started supplying chips to Australia.

Second mod, which is more about looks than anything else. I stumbled across some 17" wheels that were stock items on an Audi TT while looking for some 18" wheels to suit my GTI. Basically I couldn't refuse this deal which saw me get 4 TT wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport rubber (95% tread) for $1500AUD. They look great, even though 18" was my preferred choice.

Overall the car is still great and I have had no major problems with the car and would highly recommend this car to any prospective purchaser.

I have a Volkwagen GTI VR6. it is four years old, 27000 miles. I had to change the tires, battery; transmission to reverse is rough and fix a transmission leak once. Also the gears are not as smooth as it was initially.

The control of left and right view mirrors through the button has failed. It partially works occasionally.

My friend has one too, he is having the same problemm. Left and Right view mirror controls failing is consistent. I don't know why VW still doesn't fix this problem. It will work initially, but after a couple of years you will hit on the problem.

This is where japanese cars are the king. They never fail even after 10 years.

That last comment is right on about most Japanese cars, going strong 10 years in.

You know what's amazing, back in the 70's few Japanese cars

lasted 10 years because they usually rusted out in about 5 or so. At least they did here in the North East. Their engines were always very strong though.

Now even inexpensive cars like Civics and Corollas, are lasting well over 10 years and easily reaching 200k miles, if maintained properly.