The problem was that the passenger sill went from being aligned with the rear of the door (i.e. door vertically above sill), to being sticking out from the front edge of the door/wing by 7 to 8 mm.
Now, that doesnt sound much, but it looked horrible, especially as the drivers side was nicely aligned.
All the VW staff who examined it agreed it was wrong.
1st suggestion was to cut sill off and weld new one in correct place; I rejected that idea.
I then measured 4 or 5 other Golfs in and around the showroom, notingthe width of the car from LH sill too RH sill; the widest one was a good 5mm narrower than mine, re-inforcing my belief the sill was on in the wrong place.
2nd suggestion, from VW paint & body "experts" was to carefully remove the outer door skin and put back carefully in alignment with the sill. However , icalled the head man at paint & body (someone left his tel number on an email, lucky me), and said this was a bodge to cover up a cockup! He said VW would never do a bodge, but I cannot see any other politer way of describing this suggestion.
After several more weeks of prevaricating by VW, I handed a letter to the dealer formally rejecting the car under the sale of goods act. This stirred them up a bit!
I was then offered a black E30, but it didn't have the options I wanted, so they agreed to supply a new vehicle from scratch, to any spec I wanted. (Hence the 5 door for practicality in lieu of original 3 door, which I still prefer looks wise).
This means the limited edition is now not quite so limited, as they apparently made more than just the extra one for me.
I'll post some pics of new & old (if I can find the old ones) and figure out how to post pics. (is it just copy & paste into this window?)
Regards, Niv.
