WHOLE IN ONE

The Volkswagen Golf has been all things to all motorists for half a century. At the wheel of a classic Mk1, VICKY PARROTT charts the eight-generation history of one of the world's most successful cars

I owned a Golf once.

Hasn't everyone? Mine was a comical experience, because I bought it for a feature in this very magazine. Back in 2012 I handed over £300 to a bloke who could only just be bothered to leave his house in order to sell his car, for a very basic, high-mileage Mk3 Golf, complete with a few months' MOT and tax and in surprisingly solid mechanical order.

I bought it solely so I could run it against two similarly cheap impulse-buy bangers, over 100 laps of a track and then scrap it on the same day. The idea was to find out how cheaply you could do a track day if you were willing to do it in, well, just about anything.

Frustratingly, my colleague's Saab proved to be not only faster on track but also worth more in scrap at the end of the day, so I didn't win.

And that was my brief albeit extreme experience of Golf ownership, courtesy of Autocar and a mildly ropey version of what is widely hailed as the worst generation of the Volkswagen Golf. Yet even that had actually worn the miles well: it had doors that thunked with satisfying sturdiness, and over our day together it stoically withstood levels of abuse to which a normal family hatchback would never normally be subjected.

Today I find myself at rather a different end of the Golf spectrum. The black, polished, boxy delight of this Mk1 Volkswagen Golf GL 1.5 gleams in the flat light of a British autumn day. The moment I left my driveway, headed for Salisbury and out onto the plains, I received a thumbs-up from a passing van driver, smiles from pedestrians and a whole world of goodwill for this raspy little hatchback.