UK’s OLDEST Volkswagen Golf GTI up for grabs. But what’s it worth?

The oldest Volkswagen Golf GTI in the UK – one of 22 VW imported a year ahead of launch – is up for auction in June with a £30k estimate.

Now the Classic Car market has gone stratospheric on values, attention has been turning to more recent car icons as classic car lovers look for a way to play a game which has become the preserve of only the very wealthiest.

That shift has seen strongly rising values for even mainstream cars from the 1970s and 80s, and in particular performance models, with prices for ‘Classic’ Performance Ford Escorts and Performance Sierras hitting six figures.

With that in mind, it’s perhaps a little surprising that this car – the earliest VW Golf GTI in the UK – has an estimate of just £28-32k ahead of it crossing the block at H&H Classics Auction next month.

At first glance, this may not appear to be a UK car as it’s LHD, but it’s one of just 22 cars VW imported in to the UK in 1978 – a year ahead of the GTI’s UK launch – to feed interest in the new ‘Hot Hatch’. And it worked – buyers queued up for the only affordable car you could buy which had sports car performance and family lugging abilities. 

‘WHX 995S’ is thought to be the only one of the 22 original cars remaining – making it the UK’s earliest GTI – and has undergone a complete nuts and bolts restoration to put it back in to factory fresh condition as befits a car responsible for the whole Hot Hatch genre.

The Golf GTI will be sold on 5 June 2018 in Epsom, Surrey.