I've said this before and I'll say it again, never build a car that you can already buy, there's just no point.

Actually I plaugurised that from Golf+ but it does make sense if you think about it.

If you were going to save up say 3k, then that would be enough to buy and insure a good mk2 8v and probably leave you some change if you really want to get into a GTI, you could probably do the same for a very early mk3 too, it all comes down to how much coin you've got to spend on one.