A bit of GTI history....

Hi there. I just discovered the forum today while looking for a cabby to restore and thought I should share a bit of Golf GTI history with you. Maybe someone can fill in some of the gaps in the story for me.

When VW decided to convert the Golf GTI to RHD for the UK market they set all their engineers to work on converting a LHD GTI. They had no luck with it and were ready to give up on the idea. (This may explain the wait from 1975 to 1979 for a RHD car.) My uncle, Robert McBurney, a rally driver and VW garage owner in Ballymena, had a lot of Volkswagen engineering experience, primarily through his rally career, including knocking up a Beetle with a Porsche engine rammed in the back. Knowing of his reputation VW shipped over a LHD GTI to Ballymena and Robert succesfully made the conversion and sent it back to Germany. I think you all know the rest….

Unfortunately Robert passed away in 2005, but I thought that I should share this little bit of history. Hope it's of some interest to you.

Robert's obituary can be read here:

http://www.irish-rallying.com/article.php?article_id=050817/013239

Nice bit of history , but the link won't work for me?

Not sure what's going on with that. It works fine for me in Firefox and IE.

thanks nial,

is he to blame for the brake linkage then

no seriously, nice one for sharing that!!!

dub76 has a mk1 golf 1976 which was rhd from the factory so he didnt have to wait til 79 :wink:  :wink:

Well, I might have got the dates a bit wrong! Maybe he did the conversion in '75 or '76 and they didn't start full RHD production until later. I'm sure somebody out there knows a lot more about it than me.

link works for me!
good read!

Ah yes working for me too now.

Nial, you've got a PM!

Can't see converting the GTi version to RHD being that difficult once the non-GTi versions had already been done 3 or 4 years beforehand…

Yeah, I thought that too, but there must be some differences to make it so. If it was as simple as that I'm sure VW would have done it themselves.

In fact, the only RHD GTi specific parts I can think of that were not previously available on other RHD models (S, LS, etc) are the front carpet and wiper arm with spoiler  

Yeah, maybe my dead uncle and all his team of mechanics and engineers and VW are lying. Dunno. I just thought some one might have some specific information, rather than just speculation.

Quote from the obituary:

Not well known, perhaps not accidentally, was that he showed the Volkswagen factory how to convert a Golf GTI from left to right hand drive. There was a clamour for right hand drive GTI?s in the UK but Volkswagen said it couldn?t be done. Robert made the conversion himself from the standard parts available and the car was presented to the incredulous VW hierarchy in Germany. The GTI became a roaring success in the UK.

I suspect the story has a more non-technical angle. I think that what really happened was VW was completely taken back by the success of the GTI variant on the continent when it was first introduced, that they put the launch of the RHD versions back and back, since they were selling all they could make anyway.

What probably happened is that the uncle simply converted a LHD GTI using the existing factory parts from another RHD Golf and rallied it. This would have generated a lot of public/media interest, so VW were obliged to give RHD production of the GTI a greater priority.

As Dubboy has explained, there is nothing special about the RHD 'conversion' of the GTI - except that it took 3-4 years to officially arrive! If you look at the sales figures of the GTI in the UK, say 1976-79, they are microscopic compared to 1980 onwards.

Came across this article and thought I would comment since I heard this story first hand on many occasions (and see published magazine articles many years ago)

I know for a fact that he converted 1 GTI to RHD using std VW parts.  They weren't all Golf parts though.  They included VW transporter parts etc.  VAG then sent a team of engineers to see the car.  They inspected it and sent him another LHD GTI so he could do it again.  The car was converted and returned to VW.  

I am not a mechanic and cannot give details of specific parts involved but can vouch for the authenticity of the story.

Drive safe

how come the left hand drives are ready to set up to right hand drive then? theres no cutting of chassis/panels needed….. what about steering rack?  wipers are a bit cock-eye they would have already knew they were gonna sell right hand drive

Perhaps he did a 'brake conversion' where the master cylinder was moved from left to right. And then VW took a look at it, and gave it a thorough good ignoring until Mk2!!!

Like I said, I am not sure what he did.  I know that at the time VW said they didnt believe he could have converted it, hence sending him another car to convert.  When they released the RHD it used the same parts as during the conversion.

Prior to the Summer of 1979, and the introduction of the factory RHD GTI, there were a few LHD Golf GTIs converted to RHD. A neighbour of mine had one done. GTI Engineering also offered the conversion - at a price!

The point here is that there is nothing special about the RHD conversion. It was done locally by people like GTi Engineering who converted 30 cars using off the shelf Mk1 parts before VW UK could have cars available, type approved and market them. Its's VW who own the intellectual property rights to the RHD parts and nobody else.