It's Arrived!

Not sure if I've told the story on Blip much, but I've been waiting for my old Golf to be shipped from the UK. It's been a 2 year wait.

Problem was that the car had to be 25 years old, which it finally reached earlier this year. That was the big obstacle. Once it's 25 it can tick all the DoT and EPA boxes "25 or over". Otherwise it'd be subjected to unaffordable safety and emmission changes. But 25 - no changes are required.

I bought this Golf 21 years ago when I was 19. I drove 50,000 miles in 2 years and then decided that I would either die driving this car, or kill someone. I wouldn't say reckless, but I would say overconfident. It is/was a fast car at the time. A very fast car, I did not disappoint. I remember my old friends talking about me and that car. We had another friend who drove nearly as fast but was reckless with it. But me, I remember a comment one evening "you drive even faster". However, I was also told that given a choice of being in my car or my friend, everyone would choose me.

My father drove it into the ground over a number of years, but one winter the car had finally given up, stuck up 2 fingers at my dad and refused to budge from the drive. Where it sat for a few months. A neighbour came over and offered to take a look, which was the start of a very expensive rebuild.

Everything on this car was rebuilt back to VAG parts. Nearly every part of the car was sourced at the VAG parts counter locally. The engine was totally rebuilt and had to use some expensive Isreali made pistons for certain reasons. The pistons alone cost around £100 each!

When it was finished it was used for the occasional summer, but stored in a local garage when not used. (Under a cover of course).

The fun thing about this car was that in 2004 my future wife had a ride in it. It was the first time she had ever been over 100mph in a car. 135 in fact.

For the last two years I haven't even seen the car as I live so far away now.

The story picks up earlier this year. For some reason my old friend who rebuilt it got arse-ache about getting it ready for shipping so another friend offered to take it under his wing. He got the Golf MOT'd, re-taxed, and ready for shipping (it needed to be road legal for some reasons). When the time was right he dropped it at Southampton ready to be shipped. Which was last month! He did a sterling job and I'll be forever grateful for his enthusiasm for a good long time.

The Golf landed about 2 weeks ago and for whatever reason has stood around waiting for paperwork. The shipping company were a lot better 2 years ago when the Mustang came over.

Today we collected it, though not without mishap.

First problem was that it hadn't been released for collection (despite our instructions that it had). That took 2 hours to clear up. Second problem was that someone had stolen the rear plate!

I'd like to say the trip back was uneventful but it wasn't. It soon became clear that we had a cooling issue and that by doing 80mph was the only way to keep it cool. At 70 it would heat up.

The car ran perfectly first thing in the morning, but by the first 100 mile mark it was running like crap. It's running on much weaker fuel right now. Second 100 mark and it seemed to be happier. I did smell a hot rancid water smell when we first took off as well, but that seemed to disappear after 50-70 miles.

8 hours later and quite a few stops and we got the Golf home. The last hour was easier as the outside temperature dropped to 20-23C.

So very odd to see this car outside now. Very odd. But great.