1996 Volkswagen Golf GTi review from North America

Normal wear and tear items, mostly:

That *&^! exhaust shield on the header pipe rattles at 2500-2800 rpm!

Replaced rear shocks.

Replaced after-market clutch cable.

We obtained this car from my friend's mother who drove it a couple of miles each day to the train station in New Jersey, and that is about it. (Her husband, who is a BMW mechanic, replaced the timing belt before we took ownership.) Now, we use the car to commute the 4-mile round trip to the office, but not every day. Thus the low miles.

The car remains in a carport, so we have not noticed the common complaint about body moldings falling off.

We immediately jettisoned the non-adjustable stock clutch cable, which we feared was contributing to premature wear of the clutch. The after-market clutch cable lasted almost five years before it failed a couple of months ago. We replaced it with a similar one.

The biggest issue with this car is that crazy heat shield on the header pipes. Since we got the car in 2001, we have had the shield spot-welded every six months or so, due to the poor design that causes it to produce an extremely annoying harmonic at 2800 rpm. Now we are totally fed up and will likely just have someone remove the damned thing and re-wrap the header pipe with heat tape.

The car is not the quickest of the lot (my 1972 Datsun 510 is actually a bit perkier), but it is comfortable on long trips and gets good gas mileage. Even though it is now 10 years old, it doesn't look dorky to me, at all... the design has aged quite well.

Overall, the car has performed fine. We will likely keep it until it hits 100k miles, which should be around 2011 or so!