I like many of you am, bored, broke and getting increasingly fed up of the elephant keeping me in the room. I will at least try to spend the many hours I have at home doing something productive and this will be writing on here for the lovely people like you to read. Please enjoy my incoherent ramblings and unimportant opinions.
I have spent a large chunk of lock-down dreaming of the car I will hopefully own once this is over and I can pass my driving test. Unfortunately as time has gone on and my job prospects have got ever slimmer the dreams have gone from Audis and BMWs to much more boring mundane machinery with everything from fiestas and even scarily Peugeots featuring, but, in an effort to bring me back to my happy place it's time to focus on a beautiful car that for me currently is unobtainable.
The VW Polo Gti 9n3
An iconic badge, tune-able engine, punchy looks and a "I'll get my big brother after you" attitude, put all these together and you have a very unfairly over looked baby hot-hatch.
The 1.8T engine which has featured in seemingly every single VW group car from the early 2000s has proved to be a very reliable platform for tuning, reliably putting out 250hp with the first hint of a remap (which of course if any insurance company is reading I won't be doing.)
In a beauty contest the Polo 9n3 has aged well and in GTI it looks even better. Wheels and honeycomb grill stolen from the Mk5 Golf Gti, lightly flared wheel arches and lowered suspension give the polo a lovely charming scrappy little brother look. A red stitched steering wheel and bolstered bucket seats made from Jackie Stewart's trousers give the interior a cool retro vibe that I absolutely love.
While as of yet the handling is an unknown to me, my obsessive watching of Top Gear and Chris Harris has taught me that VW can definitely build a great handling Hot-Hatch and the polo gti shouldn't be any different.
There is one tiny little problem; the price. The Polo gti is a rare car and unfortunately for me this means that in the wonderful land of Ireland there are very few around and even less for sale. In fact there is one. Not one in decent condition not one in the right spec, no, there is only one 9n3 Polo Gti for sale in Ireland and it's €6,000. which is about €5,500 outside my price bracket. But life must go on, besides I've always rathered the Seat Leon Cupra instead.
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Comments (1)
Keep looking, I'm sure you'll find the right one. You're lucky living in Europe, you can buy a car from another country and drive it home in a day