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A Tribute - To Nigel from those who new him....................

Low, loud and very blue, Nigel Weedon's Mkl GTi is precisely the sort of car we love to feature within these pages. So when a letter popped through the door enclosing a pic of this neat machine, we just had to take a look. It turned out that the letter was written by Nigel's girlfriend Charlene, and he'd promised her a holiday if she got the car featured in The Golf. Looks like you've got yourself a holiday, Charlene.

Both are committed Golf fanatics (Nigel even works as a green-keeper at a golf club) but, where Charlene's car is a good example of a standard Mk1, Nigel wanted his to be really different. He bought this, his third Mk1 GTI, with the sole purpose of creating something special - a car to keep.

With this in mind, and finding inspiration in a variety of cars seen at shows, together with close scrutiny of others noticed in magazines such as this one, he began looking for a really solid rust-free car on which to base his dream Mk1 GTi. And it just had to be a Mk1. The later GTi's just don't have the same level of appeal for Nigel; "They're too smooth and refined, all the fun goes out of those later cars". He looked at lots of cars, paying particular attention to the bodywork condition, but none seemed good enough. When he found this one, it didn't initially appear to be the obvious candidate. The paintwork was dull and the trim tatty and incomplete. Even worse, the lowered suspension and presence of battery cut-out switch and roll cage didn't exactly give the impression that it had been owned by a maiden aunt from new and never taken above 60! As Mk1 Golfs went, it was one of those that the experts would tell you not to touch with a barge-pole.

However, further investigation proved that it was a good honest car and, with ~9k on the clock, just about run-in. Except for the odd stone-chip, there was no rust; the body was solid as granite with no signs of crash damage, and there was even a shed-load of receipts for money spent on the car, much of it from VAG. Having owned Golf Mk1 5 for the best part of a decade, Nigel knew where to look for rust -wings, arches, doors, tops of struts and this one was a minter. A real snip at two grand.

The big bonus with this car, however, was that it came with a lipsmackin' l9OOcc engine. It was an engine that was built for go, not just for show, and hinted at a race career. Equipped with a Piper 285 cam, a big-valve stage three head, a Neuspeed throttle body and a baffled alloy sump, it oozed power.

All this happened three years ago. For the first year or so, Nigel used it as a runaround, but all the time collecting the special parts needed for when the rebuild started proper. Soon, Nigel and Charlene's spare bedroom began to resemble a parts warehouse.

The bed was tipped on its end to make room for a genuine VW Clipper Cabrio body kit. Then in went a pair of bargain Recaros, bought for a hundred quid each. They didn't seem quite so much of a bargain when he found that it would cost a lot more than that to buy matching material to trim the rears. Finally, all the little (and not so little) odds and sods needed to transform the Golf were collected together and stored.

For more details - Order "The Golf" Issue November 1998

Sadly Nigel died tragically over Christmas 2002.  Therefore this feature will remain on 'Golfnutters.co.uk' as a tribute to his work.

Golf Nutters UK is strickly a non-profit web site - Last updated: 04-Nov-2001