Automobile Technical, Repair & Restoration

This is a book for Golf and Jetta owners who want to add some of their own individuality to what is already an outstanding car in its own right. Many of the sections in this book are about how to carry out your own mods on a DIY basis, while others set out to show what is available and what the specialists can do to your car for you; the choice is yours. Naturally enough, owners are drawn to their Golfs and Jettas because of their cars' build quality and their sheer dependability, but the cars are also renowned for their sportiness and verve on the road, even the 1300cc models being capable of quite a respectable turn of speed and having cornering ability and handling that make them a pleasure to drive. And when you get up to the level of a GTi, the levels of performance are a revelation to those not used to scorching acceleration and pin-point precision steering. Yet, at the same time, Golf and Jetta GTis have an ease of use and comfort that would put many an everyday 'shopping' car to shame. In spite of all that, no-one would claim that Golfs and Jettas, in the form in which they leave the factory, could ever be unique. It's up to the individual owner to stamp his or her own hallmark onto the car in one of the many hundreds of ways suggested by this book. Volkswagen themselves are more than pleased to help the owner do so in a responsible manner, which is why they have given their invaluable assistance and advice in many parts of this book. The range of improvements and modifications that you can make to your Golf and Jetta is vast. Among the simplest are styling stripes for the bodywork, mats for the interior and performance-boosting exhaust pipe swaps for the engine. For more serious modifications, you can buy body styling kits from your Volkswagen dealer (or have them fitted there, Recaro seats from the same source, or go to Turbo Technics and give your Golf incredible acceleration - at a price. All of these modifications, and more, are included in this book. We have not pretended that everything shown here can be DIY fitted; indeed, we recommend that some of it should not be for reasons of safety or specialist skills required. Improvements and modifications to Golfs and Jettas cover a huge field and we hope we have done it justice. We certainly could not have done so without the close assistance of all the specialists and suppliers shown in this book. In every case, we selected the specialist company which we believe has the most to offer the Golf and Jetta owner in their particular field; that's why you'll recognise some of the biggest 'names' in the business in this book, alongside some less well-known names who deserve to be better known. We hope and believe that the combination of top specialists, experienced motoring writing and enthusiastic Golf ownership has brought you a book that you, as a Golf or Jetta owner, will want to turn to again and again.