Volkswagen Scirocco GT | Shed of the Week
The third-generation Scirocco finally breaks its shed duck - albeit in oil burner format
Remember all the excitement in 2008 when the third-generation VW Scirocco came out? Twitter was only two years old at the time. Shed has never knowingly twitted in his life so he's staying out of this one, but even if 'trending' wasn't yet a thing in '08 it was still a fitting word for the hullabaloo that surrounded the successor to the 1974 Giugiaro-penned, Karmann-built type 1 and the also rather nice in-house-designed 1981 type 2, Giugiaro's drawings for the follow-up having been torched for being too boring.
Both of those first two Sciroccos were built on the Mk1 Golf platform. The 1988 gen-three Scirocco turned out to be not a Scirocco at all but a Corrado, again designed in-house but this time based on the Mk2 Golf. Again it was a handsome little thing and quite a goer too in VR6 or supercharged G60 guise, but it wasn't hugely successful.
All three of these 2+2 coupes gathered strong followings, so devotees were getting quite moist at the prospect of a Scirocco return. The eventual arrival in mid-2008 of the Mk 5 Golf-platformed car did indeed prompt strong sales in both the private and fleet sectors, but the fat-bottomed Scirocco quietly disappeared in 2017 after a decent nine-year run and a midlife facelift in 2014. Why? Well, if you asked anyone who mattered at VW they said it was nicking sales from the fast Golf range. They didn't seem to mind that when half a million Mk1 Sciroccos were being sold. Perhaps nobody noticed or cared though because for every Mk1 Scirocco going out of the door there would be fourteen Golfs going out of another much wider one, as our John pointed out in his recent piece on a Mk1 Scirocco Storm.
As the last Scirocco (probably a 276hp R, or maybe a 217hp GTS) was leaving the line in 2017 there was some half-hearted conciliatory chat from Wolfsburg about giving the coupe thing another go sometime in the future, maybe, but when the future inconveniently arrived three years later and some journo reminded them about it the VW spokeshuman made its excuses and left. So, Scirocco devotees, don’t be holding your breath.
The 2009 pre-facelift car we've got for you is a 2.0-litre diesel. This would have been anathema to many dyed-in-the-wool Scirocco fans, but you have to remember that diesel cars weren't always the world-ending pariahs that they are now. There was a 141hp fuel-sipping version of that 2.0 engine, but there was also a high-performance one, as per this one here, which pumped out 168hp plus a plumptious 258lb ft between 1,750 and 2,500rpm. With 1,395kg to pull those stats made it good for a 0-62mph time of 8.1sec and a top speed of 138mph, numbers that you could of course cheaply reduce and increase respectively via a spot of remapping. In standard spec, the 168hp motor returned over 53mpg on the official combined cycle and nearly 66mpg on the extra-urban one.
The vendors have put our shed down as an automatic, but unless Shed's eyes are deceiving him again or VW sneakily brought out a three-pedal DSG when he wasn't looking he's pretty sure it's a six-speed manual. Which is good because DSG problems aren't cheap to fix.
Now, for this sort of money – £1,895, which is at least £600 below the typical starting price for these – you can't expect perfection. For a start, this is a leggy 'un at 187,000 miles. The bodywork has seen some action, it has aftermarket wheels and Ditchfinder tyres, the belts and water pump are 80,000 miles old and the MOT runs out in mid-November.
On the positive side, the MOT history is non-worrying, with almost all of the advisories being for consumables. 80k is bang on the recommended belt replacement interval, so you should be OK for a bit longer yet on that score until you can rustle up the £400 or so that an indie will charge you for the work. Hence the price being asked for the car, presumably, which is fair. Don’t wait too long though as the tensioners are a bit fragile. It would also be good to see some reassuring paperwork on remedies for carbon buildup, injector trouble and DPF failure. With this mileage, you'd like to think that these are all in the past, but we always need to be aware of Trigger's Broom syndrome.
Nicer wheels and tyres will be easy to find and de-scraping the body is just a rattle can away. Tailgate support struts conk out and there wasn't much room in the back but if you folded the rear seats down you had a useful 750 litres to shove your bike in. That's assuming the boot latch mech was still working of course, as they were known for giving trouble. Even with everything sorted, you'll probably still hear the rattles and squeaks that are par for the Scirocco course. Some of these can be difficult to remedy. Like Shed says though, there are some noises you just have to learn to live with.
By the way….did you know Princess Anne has a Scimitar?
Lost the most money on depreciation on that car than any other I owned though, stupidly got it when they had been around for 2 or so years and vw did an amazing job of retaining stock and keeping prices up. As soon as the oldest ones were more than 3 years old prices tumbled almost over night. Lost 50% of its value in just over 2 years.
Mine was also red, and despite vw repainting the bumpers and spoilers 3 times they were always a different colour to the rest of the car.
Still surprised to see them this cheap. Feel very old now
I can definitely get onboard with this shed this week for sure, and I've personally always liked the shape of these.
I'd buy that at the price, probably will go another 5 years relatively trouble free and be a nice place to sit.
The car was faultless over the 3 year pcp, got offered a C class when he gave it back, and instantly regretted it, the MB was in and out of the garage for months with electrical issues time and time again.
It may look like a squashed golf to some, but I find it quite handsome, and a bit more imaginative than the sea of golf TDI you see in that era.
Although based on the golf platform, the front chassis components were told, but rear was modified utilising the wider track from Passat for extra grip.
A young.relative of mine bought a 1.4 TSi 160 as his first car at 18 at the time it was.about 4 years and.ill.give him credit he looked.after it and didn't make it look a t
t .Infact 10 years agoish I was quite envious.this maybe cheap.buy due to mileage.this car not so and with the 2 Mk5 Golfs I owned I'm not a fan.of this 2.0.d but it's nice to see as a shed.
Too similar to the three door hatch they were based on, the sat on rear end styling didn't work for me.
Coupés are swoopy (is that a word ?) things not a nip and tuck at the hips.
Beauty in the eye of the beholder and all that though.
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