everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and to say the general public wont regard, say...a mk 3 GTI as a classic is lunacy... everyone has heard the phrase "golf GTI" so that in its self is gonna help it make a classic status.
Not everyone is as closed minded as the people on the forums (which in reality is prob a tiny part of the popularity)
i am just basing it on my own exp, and that is wherever i go in the mk 3, i get people asking about it etc etc, its probably because i keep it looking clean and its old, not much younger than a late mk 2 (1993 to be exact)
theirs many run down mk 3 gtis out their, yes, that is for sure, we know it was marketed for sales more than anything, however these tatty examples will be off the road in no time = seeing many mk 3 gtis on the road in the future will not be as common sight
same as what happend with the mk 2, they used to be common as muck too. many people on here just wont remember that as they were too young or not even born.
if you had a 8v mk 2 back in the 90's all my mates would take the p1ss out of you (similar stuff as the mk 3 gets now - heavy and slow etc
a golf gti is a bit of a classic no matter what mk, yeah on the forums the 3 gets bad press, epecially on this forum, iv had mk 2's, 3's and 4's, i love em all, theirs something similar about all golfs to me personally, and thats why i like them, but thats just me. i will say out of all the ones iv had, the black mk 3 has been the better in terms of reliability.. maybe mine is just a good one if their is such a thing
in a nutshell, it will still be a classic, even if for the wrong reasons
hope this made sense ?