Well if you drove it for 12 years it's a Golf II... a terrible car for today's standards.

I don't know which ones were II/III/IV etc., but I know mine was one of the last ones to come off of the U.S. assembly line in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania before they closed it down in 1988 and moved the operation to Mexico.

It was a decent car for the first ten years of its life, but most of its components were designed to start giving out after that. In the last two years, I had more problems than I could stand, so I traded it in on an Accord last month.

Interior-noise-wise, its biggest problem was that the various plastic bits were mostly clipped on instead of screwed on. As many times as it had been ripped off and I had worked on the stereo, the clips were all mostly broken or worn out. The thing became a rolling squeak-bucket.

I also had a problem where the vapor barriers in the doors got old and the seals came loose. So when it rained, I got water coming in under the door upholstery and onto the floor pan. I kept trying to repair those vapor barriers, but you'd be surprised how hard it is to seal them completely. So I kept having to dry out the carpets and eventually just removed all the padding on the floor pans, which contributed to the road noise.

Still, the thing was darn quick with the factory 16v engine (I didn't do any performance tweaks). I regularly did over 100mph on the freeway, and I was able to pass anyone even on uphill grades. Very nimble little car. Had a tendency to snap into oversteer unpredictably if you pushed it past the limit, but otherwise quite agile. When I traded it in on the Honda, I officially gave up that kind of driving. I guess it means I'm getting old. I'll miss it.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144