Yeah early GTi's had orange side reps
External appearance was also criticised by many, the rise in car crime leading VW to produce a hot hatch that looked distinctly tepid. The standard fit Le Mans alloy wheels were as bland as boiled rice and the only other distinctions were the black plastic wheel arch kit, subtly different headlights, slightly deeper front spoiler, two bar body coloured grille instead of the black three bar of lesser models and darkened rear lights.Things didn't look promising with initial sales slow and very few cars registered on a 'J' plate. As an incentive, a few months later VW made standard the factory fit electric sunroof and windows for the 1993 model year.
Nothing much changed with the 8 valve model until it was quite significantly revamped in October 1994 for the 95 model year. Externally the only changes were the wheels, now the slightly more attractive 10 spoke 'Long Beach' style and the front spoiler which had become the shallower L/CL/GL model. The interior seat fabric was now 'Cockpit Cloth' as opposed to the original bobble prone 'Jacquard Classic'. The really significant improvements were the now standard fit ABS and driver's airbag as well as an electronic engine immobiliser. There were also subtle and much needed tweaks to both suspension and engine management which, while never officially announced, improved things somewhat. Sales improved and these later M reg onwards car are quite common, many originally being sold to company car fleets.
A year later the last changes were made to the model before the launch of the Mk4 in 1998. Subtle as ever the 8v now benefited from the famous bee sting aerial, previously a 16v distinction and front fog lights became standard. Also, in keeping with the rest of the VW range, the side repeaters changed from orange and rectangular to clear and oval with the wing recess reshaped to suit. It was about this time when Bosch Simos took over engine mangement duties from the venerable Digifant first seen in the 1988 Mk2.
A not very well known fact is that while Wolfsburg was preparing for production of the Mk4, supplies of the Mk3 Golf were maintained with imports from South Africa. Many 'R' and extremely rare 'S' registrations are of this type with no obvious indication of their unusual origins except the chassis number which has the letter 'U' as its eleventh character symobolising Uitenhage as plant of manufacture, not 'W' for Wolfsburg. It would be interesting to see if build quality is up to German standards as it is widely acknowledged in the USA that Mexican built cars do not match up to the Prussian perfection we normally enjoy.
By the end of its run the Mk3 GTI had developed in to a superb car for stress free mile-munching. Safe, refined, prestigious, enviromentally friendly and reliable with a dash of speed, a truly great vehicle.
Every dog has its day and this was certaily the case with the Mk3 GTI when VW prematurely stopped production of the Mk4 GTI with the 1.8 litre 125 bhp non-turbo engine due reports of poor driveability replacing it with a 2.0 litre 8v lump virtually identical to that used in the Mk3 GTI, need I say more?
