Chelsea was once a ‘normal’ spot. Even in the 1970s, you could find local ironmongers and tobacconists, and the place to do your weekly shop was a run-of-the-mill Safeways slap-bang in the middle of the Kings Road. The spoilt brats swaggering their way along the pavements were English in those days, not Russian.
And if you needed to get yourself a little runabout for those weekdays spent in town then there was an old-fashioned car dealer just a few brisk steps away from Sloane Square, down Pavilion Road. Mind you, Walter Scott – Scotts of Sloane Square – sold only quality gear, Volkswagens and Audis, so if it was to be a shiny new Polo rather than a dusty secondhand Escort picked up across the river in Battersea, then mummy and daddy would have to be implored for help.
Scotts, however, started to see a new influx of well-informed chaps sidling into their mews showroom late in ‘77. These smart young fellows – and it was mostly fellows – had often been leafing through car magazines in dentists’ waiting rooms, and were now intrigued by this hot little number called the Golf GTi. Could I try one, they kept asking. There was a problem, though. While news was afoot that the souped-up Golf was everything a latterday Mini Cooper S could be, and quite a lot more besides, you simply couldn’t buy one in the UK.
The Golf, you probably don’t need reminding, is one of the great cars of the 1970s, the complete antithesis to the air-cooled, rear-engined Beetle but, with its front-wheel drive, water-cooled front engine and brilliantly simple, square-cut Giugiaro lines, just as much the right product for its times. As with the Beetle, reliable family transport was VW’s goal.
The GTi version, however, had been created on the quiet by Volkswagen engineers determined to prove their managers wrong and that that there was indeed merit in the idea they first mooted in 1973. Wielding their spanners in their own time in the evenings and at weekends, they had installed the Audi 80 GT’s 1588cc engine complete with Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection to give 110bhp, together with new inlet and exhaust manifolds and larger diameter valves. Front disc brakes, wide alloy wheels, stiffer anti-roll bars and a chunky three-spoke steering wheel completed the package.
In the end, and as the lads at Wolfsburg had done all the development work for free, VW hesitantly sanctioned a limited edition run of 5000 cars in 1975. But once word got out that this taut, tight, tingling little car was even more exhilarating than an Alfasud Ti, it joined the VW catalogue full-time.
The company could not build enough.
There was even a dash of rare German humour to the golfball-shaped gearknob, and while the car didn’t actualy need wheelarch extensions to be street-legal, they were fitted anyway… to protect the bright red or green paintwork from the stones that flew every time the owner couldn’t resist flooring the throttle again.
In many ways it still remained quite discreet. For instance, there was no tail spoiler because the aerodynamics were already excellent, and only a very modest front airdam was needed to help the tyres grip the road.
Back in the Scotts showroom, the salesmen – usually sailing pleasantly through their days as they took orders for the odd Scirocco or retriever-friendly Passat Variant – were on the backfoot. Coutts chequebooks would have been brandished but they were forced to adopt the official line that mysterious “technical reasons” meant there could be no right-hand drive cars to squeal around the cobbled backstreets off Kensington High Street.
The well-heeled clamour for the feisty, 108mph three-door hatchback that could hit 60 in 9.6sec proved not to be resisted. Pleas from Scotts and other dealers to head office meant that, in 1978, Volkswagen took the highly unusual move of launching the GTi here, to special order only, in left-hand drive form. And the cost was £5010, a full five hundred smackers more than an MGB and the same price as the perennially desirable BMW 316.
How many of the 22 LHD cars available in 1978 were channeled through Scotts has not been recorded for motoring history, but the company must have sold a good number of the estimated 500 to 700 examples delivered to the UK in early ’79. The distinctive Scotts rear window stickers and tax-disc holders no doubt ran out constantly.
In any other part of this country, a left-hooker, no matter now sought-after, would have been shunned. But this was no normal part of the country. This was SW1, London’s hotbed for posh types, and there were plenty of young bucks who’d driven left-hand drive minibuses around the treacherous ledges of Val d’Isere in the ski season, and who wouldn’t have been fazed in the slightest.
Word soon spread among the young and politely thrusting Sloanes that there was an exciting new car that, just like them, knew how to party without forgetting your Ps and Qs. It would look just as at home on mummy and daddy’s driveway as it would parked outside the London estate agency where they’d taken their first job and were earning good commission through selling property to half their family and friends.
The crisp style and urban thrills of the GTi rapidly became local legion, whereas other cars officially offered in the UK with the steering wheel on the wrong side – namely the Matra-Simca Bagheera and Lada Niva – remained pretty much unicorns.
In July 1979 Volkswagen was suddenly and miraculously able to overcome those stubborn engineering impossibilities and the first right-hand drive GTis arrived. Not only that but three months later the car’s only drawback was smoothed away when the four-speed gearbox was upgraded with fifth, and BBS alloy wheels usurped the plain early ones. So, on top of all its other merits, the car could now cruise very comfortably off down the M4 for a weekend in the West Country.
The Scotts team now took any number of orders – although the waiting list was a source of smug satisfaction – and Golf GTis proliferated around south-west London, soon as common as nannies congregating to gossip outside private day nurseries. But those early, left-drive days of the urban Golf club will always be something a bit special.
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A mate and I had a garage in Ladbroke grove and we were importing LHD GTi’s from Holland in 1977 to 79/80 some of which we converted to RHD. The drive from Holland to the UK was always a fantastic hoot, pedal to the metal all the way back home. One of the main issues was the clutch cable pulling through the bulkhead on RHD cars so I made up a strengthening plate to stop it happening Loved the car then and still do.
I took delivery of my white 4 speed GTi in Milano in December 1978. Soon after I was driving to France and flying over the Channel on the Hoverspeed.
You see, I was supposed to study in England and was staying in the family flat in Belgravia. 😊
My white GTi was the talk of the neighbourhood, and every Sunday morning we were washing cars and people with Aston Martin V8s and Ferrari 400s were coming asking for information and begging for a test drive!
I soon fitted a sunroof and black vinyl roof and enjoyed great doses of traffic light envy. What a feeling and value for money!
No other car I drove in the following decades gave me such feeling, and I still dream about it.
BTW, I went to Scotts for servicing, it was very close and they were good and friendly.
Yes the Mk1 Golf GTI was one of the best cars I have ever owned in nearly 60 years of motoring. It was purchased in 1980 & one of the first right hand drive examples into the UK & the first car bought new. Some great drives fondly remembered & girlfriends attracted to it also! A wonderful car!
I’m currently restoring the only known surviving UK ‘77 GTI which was bought new in a London in September 1977. The original owner bought it when he was 27 years old! Imagine how cool it would have been to be smoking round London in it back then😂
My late wife Dr Elizabeth Johnson had one of the first Golf GTis in West Yorkshire. The general manager of one of the local dealers had registered this silver RHD 4 speeder the previous month, (the month we married). She took delivery on 1 January 1980. It was amazing! She took great pleasure in overtaking Rovers, Triumphs and other cars whose owners looked astonished as she flew past. Even the traffic officer who stopped her for speeding on a dual carriageway said it had been difficult to catch up with her! There was one other GTi we would see in Leeds at the time and they would flash one another. She went on to take delivery of one of the first 16 valve Golf GTis in West Yorkshire in October 1986. This was not as dramatic as the 8 valve car unless she floored the the throttle. Those were the days!
It was Geoff Thomas of Autofarm, an excellent engineer who devised a modification to the braking system to cure the flexing of the pedal to servo mechanism, thereby needing less force in activating the braking. All sold as an easy fit kit to greatly improve stopping power. His racing Golf had over 400 bhp.
I was fortunate enough to work at Scott’s from 85-89. It was the best job I have or will ever have. The MD was Carl Ward and the sales manager was Harald Peters and sales director John Young who went to Dovercourt and hounded me to move there with him but I stayed. The people were wonderful and the clientele amazing including royalty and all the beautiful people in the area. Selling the Golf GTi was like shelling peas and we could not get enough of them. I had several as company cars but I loved my sciroccos and often had use of a full blown Audi Quattro and went on to do the Quattro driving course at Goodwood then scaring the life out of potential owners on test drives. Those were the days. I had some amazing experiences there and alas the world has changed and they aren’t there anymore. If anyone wants to know more about Scott’s or the people let me know.