ACCEPTABLE IN THE ’80s

Some cars automatically speak for their eras. The Harris Mann school of design could exist in no decade outside the 1970s, just as the Anglo-Italian flair of the Farina range could only have been a late 1950s construct. The 1980s was a power decade on the surface, one in which greed was good and money was there for the taking, but also one where there was a vast divide between the haves and the have nots.

Some cars transcended this owing to differences in spec. Both sides of the divide the Peugeot 205, the Ford Escort, the Volkswagen Golf held an undeniable appeal. But the halo models, the GTIs and the RS Turbos, spoke of the decade in a far more potent manner than any more humble model could ever achieve.

And as time passes, the people for whom these were automotive poster children have assumed the sort of disposable income that makes them a potential classic investment. These are the cars we always dreamed of, the cars we saved for – the cars that, today, command the same rose-tinted appreciation that the MGB enjoyed back when these were new.

Volkswagen Golf GTI Mk1

The Volkswagen Golf GTI wasn’t the first sporting family car. It wasn’t even the first hot hatch. But what it was was the first to popularise the concept, the trendsetter. The Golf sparked a raft of copycats from the Ford Escort XR3 to the MG Maestro and the Astra GTE. It’s