Picture yourself in 1985 and you’re lucky enough to afford a brand new sporting Volkswagen. As you stroll into the VW dealership after meticulously studying the sales brochures and copies of Autocar, you’ve narrowed it down to a runabout with a bit of style and enough presence to twitch the neighbour curtains. Your attention is immediately focused on the Golf GTI, an obvious choice as the car arguably set the benchmark for the 80s hot hatch.
However, the salesman encourages you to look at the Scirocco GTI too. It’s about £300 more than the Golf but in the grand scheme of things not much for a sportier-looking car. At the time it was VW’s flagship model, powered by the same engine as the Golf, but was faster due to the Scirocco’s superior aerodynamics. The main shortcoming of the Scircco was the tighter cabin space, which compared to the Golf, couldn’t accommodate 4 adults. Practicality isn’t why people bought coupes, but it seemed enough to relegate the Scirocco off potential buyers’ lists.
Always overshadowed by the Golf, it sold relatively poorly, for the reason of not being a Golf! However, shrewd buyers would find the Scirocco GTI as a perfect Golf alternative, for far less money and more exclusivity. This 50,000-mile Japanese import LHD car (ordered directly from Germany to Japan when new) found itself in the UK and sold in the summer of 2023 for a reasonable £6,000. Try finding a solid MK2 Golf GTI for that sort of money.
