The day it was bought
The suspension needs fixing
Fun car - exactly what you need for the summer
VW Golf Mk1 Cabrio Karmann is not too condition. The bodywork is in the good shape with bad paint and corrosion in few places. The paint is scratched on some parts. The interior needs some work. So does the soft top that most likely will be replaced. The suspension needs fixing and electrics seems to be in good statd. The engine is rusty but looks complete. The most importantly, the car is running.
The day it was bought
The suspension needs fixing
The Volkswagen Golf Mk1 is the first generation of a small family car manufactured and marketed by Volkswagen. It was noteworthy for signalling Volkswagen's shift of its major car lines from rear-wheel drive and rear-mounted air-cooled engines to front-wheel drive with front-mounted, water-cooled engines that were often transversely-mounted.
Successor to Volkswagen's iconic Beetle, the first generation Golf debuted in Europe in May 1974 with styling by Giorgetto Giugiaro's Italdesign.
In 1969 Lotz and Italian Volkswagen importer Gerhard R. Gumpert visited the Turin Auto Show. After selecting their six favourite cars of the show, they discovered that four of the six were designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro and his Italdesign studio.
Giugiaro was invited to Wolfsburg in January 1970 to work on development project EA337. The design brief provided by Volkswagen specified a C-segment car with a two-box body in three- and five-door versions. The client also provided Giugiaro with the basic dimensions and the power-train options.
Giugiaro produced a design that reflected his signature "origami" or "folded-paper" style, emphasizing sharp corners and flat planes. Giugiaro would come to consider the Mk1 Golf the most important design of his career. Early prototypes included rectangular headlamps and wide tail-lamp assemblies. At least one pre-production car was modified with a sliding side door.
During development, candidates for the name of the new car included "Blizzard" and "Caribe", but these lost out to the final choice of "Golf". The origin of the name is variously attributed to the game of golf, the Gulf Stream current (German "Golfstrom") or the name of a horse.
The Golf Mk1 received VW model designation Type 17. Production started in March 1974, and sales officially began in May 1974. By this time Giugiaro's rectangular headlamps and wide tail-lamps had given way to round headlamps and much narrower rear lamps. On these earliest cars the lower horizontal bodyline running under the tail-lamps on the rear hatch dropped down in the location of the rear license plate. This feature has been dubbed "Swallowtail" by some Golf enthusiasts. The surface between the raised sides on the bonnet on early cars also blended smoothly into the leading edge.
The Golf was not the first example of Giugiaro's work for Volkswagen to reach production. His design for the first generation Passat was released in 1973, and the first generation Scirocco, a Giugiaro design prepared concurrently with the Golf, was released months ahead of the Golf.
In October 1974 two Golf Mk1s were driven over 30,000 km (19,000 mi) from Fairbanks, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego as a test of their durability.
The right-hand drive Golf went on sale in Britain in October 1974. For the 1975 sales year it was the 14th best selling car in Britain with more than 19,000 units sold. In 1981 the face-lifted Golf GTI was voted Car of the Year by What Car? magazine, ahead of all-new models like the Austin Metro and MK3 Ford Escort. In its final sales year of 1983 it sold more than 25,000 units and was Britain's 14th best selling car despite being almost 10 years old.
Air conditioning became available as an option on the domestic market in August 1975. The ability to retrofit the system, together with installing
a larger battery, was offered to owners of existing cars.
In December 1975 a minor styling revision deleted the Swallowtail line on the rear hatch, replacing it with a simple straight horizontal body-line. The bonnet also received a transverse line connecting the two raised sides across the front edge of the panel.
The Golf was introduced to Japan in 1975, where it was imported by the Yanase dealership chain. Its exterior dimensions and engine displacement were in compliance with Japanese Government dimension regulations, which helped sales.
The Golf Mk1 was runner-up for European Car of the Year in 1975, losing to the Citroën CX.
A minor exterior revision in December 1978 replaced the narrow front and rear bumpers with moulded units that wrapped around the sides of the car. Another minor facelift in 1980 saw the adoption of wider rear lamp clusters and a new dashboard with a more modern-looking instrument display featuring LED warning lights. US versions also received rectangular headlights. This was the last major update before the MK1 was replaced by the MK2 Golf in most markets in September 1983 and in the British market in March 1984.
The Golf was West Germany's best selling new car for much of its production life, and was among the most successful cars in the whole of Europe during its nine-year production run.
Text © Wikipedia
Technical specifications:
- Engine manufacturer: Volkswagen Group
- Engine type: spark-ignition 4-stroke
- Fuel type: gasoline (petrol)
- Fuel system: carburetor
- Charge system: naturally aspirated
- SOHC
- Cylinders alignment: Line 4
- Displacement: 1595 cm3 / 97.5 cui
- Horsepower net: 55 kW / 75 PS / 74 hp (DIN)
Str. der Republik
17321 Löcknitz
Germany