350hp tuned 1988 Volkswagen Golf GTi Mk2

When Leigh Parker set out to build a homage to his Nineties Mk2 project, the right donor bodyshell couldn’t have been further from his doorstep. Words: Alex Grant. Photos: Ben Hosking.

TAKE TWO Mk2 GOLF 1.8T & G60

Early Typ19 with blown G60 or late-spec with multi-valve 1.8T?

There are countless personal reasons why it can happen, but some cars just get under your skin, and parting company can leave a void that ultimately only one machine can fill. Re-capturing that feeling years later is never easy, held up by a dwindling stock of once readily available base cars and finding the right parts. As if that’s not hard enough, Leigh Parker had the added challenge of managing the long-planned resto-mod from the other side of the world.

«The first time I drove the car I realised all the hard work was worth it»

Behind the New South Wales plates, this ’1988 GTI is very much a product of the UK scene. British-born Leigh moved to Australia 20 years ago, taking the ideas that went into the build with him. Growing up with a petrolhead for a Dad before taking a summer job at his uncle’s workshop, he completed his apprenticeship at a Volkswagen and Audi dealership in 1988 and fell for the Mk2 Golf while he was there. It would take a couple of years to get into his own GTI, and another eight before he traded it in – for another Mk2. The memories of heyday-period ownership were hard to shake off.

“I just love the way the Mk2 drives, and it’s a pretty simple car with a classic look,” he tells us. “This is my third, and it’s a homage to the first one I bought in 1990; a Tornado Red 8-valve which I fitted with a 2.0-litre Audi bottom end and all the usual mods. I met loads of great people through work, and I was a member of Club GTI in the UK, so I went to eight or nine GTI Internationals and saw endless variations on these early cars. The scene here is good, but it’s nothing like the UK was back in the 1990s.”

Without the change of scenery, he’d probably have kept that pattern going for a little longer, but Australia didn’t offer much in the way of spiritual successors to those past projects. The Mk2 hadn’t attracted the same following as it had in Europe and, although Volkswagen had imported around 250 GTIs, they came with a hobbled 8-valve engine to meet emissions regulations and had two more doors than Leigh could live with. There are a handful of more desirable imports, but anyone who’d gone through the hassle of bringing one in wasn’t giving it up easily.

Leigh wasn’t prepared to compromise: “I had been without a Mk2 for nine years since I moved to Australia, and felt it was time to get another one. So I bought this car – unseen, obviously – for £285 on eBay UK and had it transported to my friend’s farm so he could look at it. It was an MoT fail and the previous owner didn’t want to fix it, but I wanted a Tornado red three-door to have it matched to the VIN, the trim was good, and it hadn’t been in an accident. The rest I could repair.”

He’s shrugging off a sizeable logistical nightmare. The GTI turned up at his parents’ house in Darlington on a flatbed and, having spent years working out the spec in his head, Leigh started tracking down new or upgraded parts that would have been near impossible to find locally. This wasn’t always a shortcut; the G60 arch trims and that Bonrath single wiper conversion – both identical to that 1990s project car – aren’t readily available these days, even if you’re in Europe.

With that very specific vision in mind, the stakes were dizzyingly high by the time that rolling collection of hard-sought parts was loaded into a shipping container for the long journey to Sydney. Besides the financial risks, tracking down replacements could have added months to the rebuild once it landed in Oz. “I had to submit the VIN and car details to the Australian government to get Vehicle Import Approval so it could leave the docks and be registered here,” he explains. “It arrived as a running and driving car but, as it was from the UK, it had its fair share of rust to deal with. The condition wasn’t too important, because it was going to be stripped and rebuilt anyway.”

As a Porsche main dealer workshop manager, Leigh also had the skills to take on most of the restoration himself. With the Golf stripped and loaded onto a rotisserie, he spent months replacing rotten panels with solid metal, shortcutting some of the fabrication with the help of a five-door shell he’d been able to source locally. Healing the scars of the British climate went as deep as replacing the entire roof panel, and he even took on painting the engine bay and underside, leaving only the external panels to a bodyshop.

Line it up against a photo of his old Mk2, and it’s very obviously a modernised interpretation, albeit with a few extra details tended to. The redundant holes for now removed wipers and the wing-mounted aerial were deleted along with the rust, while the trim was updated to 90 spec with big bumpers and those near-unobtainable G60 arches. There’s a period-correct look to its red-pinstriped dual-lamp grille, smoked indicators and single wiper, but the slotted gills above the bumper and those ducts in place of the fog lights are a hint that there’s a bit more going on underneath than a hopped-up 8-valve.

This sort of performance would have been a lot harder to come by 20 years ago. Leigh tracked down an early 150hp AGU-code 1.8T, which has the big-port head, higher compression ratio and tougher internals, and rebuilt it with a set of forged conrods for extra peace of mind. Boost is provided by an IHI VF22 ball-bearing turbo, mounted on a Jabbasport manifold imported with the car and drawing air in through a larger MAF housing and carbon fibre inlettubing. The important numbers? An estimated 350hp, put down through an 02J with a Quaife diff, lightened G60 flywheel, VR6 clutch and a taller fifth gear for cruising. It’s a spec reflecting a machine built for a broad range of talents, but it wasn’t easy finding space for all the hardware.

“The plan was to build a fast street car with track capability – inspired by Anders Ranbo’s silver Mk2 from the Nineties — and I had decided on that spec a long time before I started. But sourcing the parts was an endless problem, and everything I couldn’t buy had to be cut and fabricated from raw materials,” he recalls. “So the downpipe is made from scratch and I build a custom engine mount to make room for it. Same with the intercooler, I had to bin the original front crossmember and make a tubular one to mount it to. It was mostly my work, but I had to have help with the engine because I broke my shoulder mid build, so my arm was in a sling.”

Despite the OE-style install, the engine bay is home to a staggering amount of custom work, including the punched aluminium heat shield protecting the firewall, the crackle-painted cover over the coil packs and Leigh’s own airbox design behind the passenger side headlight. That need for extra space also meant relocating the washer bottle and battery inside the cabin and tucking the oil cooler away behind the grille.

Restoring the car from a stripped bodyshell offered opportunities for a few less obvious upgrades, too. The inner wings are braced against the base of the A-pillar, adding stiffness alongside the weld-in front strut brace and the substantial-looking roll cage where the rear seats once were. KW V3 coilovers put it around 40mm closer to the tarmac than factory spec, paired with a full set of polybushes, thicker anti-roll bars and adjustable camber plates, dialled in to 2.0 degrees negative up front and 1.5 at the back. Every bracket and brace was painted or powdercoated before being re-fitted.

The Australian registration process is strict on safety, so the Golf had to have the right kit to handle that extra power without risking shredded tyres or cooked brakes. The 17" BBS RX are a nod to his old Mk2 and offer enough space behind the spokes for a set of four-pot Porsche 996 calipers and re-drilled Ibiza Cupra R discs up front, and there’s a Mk4-based disc conversion at the back. Leigh changes between EBC RedStuff and BlueStuff pads for road and track, but the Pirelli P Zero Neros are sticky enough to meet all needs.

As is the interior. It’s a little like a GTI Clubsport, featuring Australian-made Velo bucket seats trimmed in factory red-pinstriped cloth to match the door cards, but with almost no bare metal left on show. A bank of VDO gauges just below eye level mean he can glance at what’s happening with that overboosted powertrain, while the gearstick is raised on a custom-made platform for easy reach on track and paired with a short-shift kit. As an added layer of safety, there are external and internal kill switches for the battery – worth having, but hopefully never to be used. “The car was quite difficult to register with so many modifications. It had to comply with the rules of a new car that was registered in 1988 in Australia, then it needed to have an engineer’s certificate for all the modifications, and the rules are different in each state. So in Queensland I wouldn’t have been able to have a half cage in a street car,” explains Leigh.

“I was fortunate enough to find a great guy who was able to certify my car as an engineer and for compliance at the same time. It took around three months going back and forth – delayed by silly things like the emissions label under the bonnet, the seatbelt buttons having to have ‘press’ written on them, and the gear knob had to have the shift pattern on top – but we got there. The first time I drove the car I realised all the hard work was worth it.”

Wheel time isn’t a rare experience. Having put in the hard graft during the build, the Golf does almost all of his weekend mileage – not only shows and track days, but the stuff his old Mk2 would have, like shopping, grabbing some lunch, or heading out into the New South Wales countryside to let off some steam. That it’s picked up class wins at VITS and VW Nationals says a lot when show and shines fall between sessions of locking horns with big-power Japanese cars and domestic market V8s at Bathurst, Bulahdelah and Canberra hill climb events. As an all-rounder, it seems he’s struck the right balance.

Needless to say, he’s smitten: “It’s so solid and almost modern, and if I’ve got the suspension set to soft then it’s fi ne – I get no complaints from my partner. I’ve driven it 250km to a fundraiser then driven home after four hours, and I was fi ne. The worst part is having no air conditioning – on a hot day in Australia, it can be a bit much.

“But I love how a 30-year-old car can be competitive on track one day and be out doing my grocery shopping the next. Most weekends my company car doesn’t move between Friday night and Monday morning. There’s nothing I’d change because I made sure it had everything I wanted beforehand.” With an appetite for the unusual, who knows where that might lead. The Golf hasn’t been immune from ongoing evolution, gaining a hidden ICE install since our shoot, and Leigh has continued to track down obscurities from Europe too. A set of stainless steel boot lip trims from a Deutsche Post Mk2 delivery van are the latest additions. Just as unwilling to pass on his hard work as the handful of other owners, there are countless reasons why Leigh is unlikely to find himself with that same automotive void any time soon.

The car that graces these pages is a homage to Leigh's very first Tornado red Mk2 (above), which he bought way back in 1990

DUB DETAILS

• ENGINE: 1781cc, four-cylinder, 20 valve turbo (AGU), IE forged conrods, Jabbasport IHI manifold, IHI VF22 turbo, GFB blow-off valve, 3" MAF housing, custom airbox with K&N cone filter, carbon fibre intake tube, 3" custom downpipe, 2.5" Jetex exhaust system, Bosch ‘Green’ injectors, wiring tidied, Kevlar cambelt, oil cooler, front-mount intercooler on custom tubular crossmember, custom aluminium engine cover, custom firewall heat shield, custom engine mounts, 02J transmission with Polo TDI taller fifth gear, Quaife limited-slip differential, Dieselgeek Short shift linkage, lightened G60 flywheel and VR6 clutch, inlet plenum and rocker cover painted crackle black, battery relocated to rear seat area, washer bottle relocated to the boot
• CHASSIS: 7.5x17” ET35 BBX RX wheels with 215/40 Pirelli P Zero Nero tyres, KW V3 coilovers, Silver Project camber plates, weld-in strut brace, front inner guard strengthened, Weitec anti-roll bar (front), Black Forest Industries anti-roll bar (rear), Powerflex bushes and steering rack mount, Porsche 996 fourpiston calipers with 305mm SEAT Ibiza Cupra R slotted discs re-drilled to 5x100 (front), Golf Mk4 calipers with 256mm Caddy discs (rear), EBC RedStuff (street) and BlueStuff (track) pads, custom HEL braided brake lines all round
• EXTERIOR: Full respray in OE Tornado Red (LY3D), G60 arches, rear wiper deleted, front wiper holes deleted, sunroof deleted, custom slotted front grille panel, sunroof deleted, Bonrath single wiper conversion, dual-lamp grille with red pinstripe, smoked indicators and side repeaters
• INTERIOR: Rear seats removed, Tornado Motorsport roll cage, Velo GPT seats with factory Recaro cloth inserts, Momo Mod .78 suede steering wheel, VDO oil pressure, oil temperure, battery and boost gauges with custom carbon fibre mount, AEM air/fuel ratio gauge, Ecliptech SHIFT-P2 LED shift light, aluminium golf ball gear knob, carbon door handle inserts, OMP aluminium pedals, battery kill switch
• SHOUT: Elton Lawes for the help with the engine and powertrain, Gavin Johnson for the exhaust and aluminium welding, Paul Grimstead for the paint and bodywork, CCU Auto Trimming, Evan at Unigroup Engineering for getting it through compliance and engineering.