VW Golf van - Factory built or home made?

[Battles]

I found this on Autotrader, wondered if anyone knew if it was a factory built model or a home made one like Elpassata's B3 (retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=readersrides&thread=49334&page=1).



It's in County Durham and is very cheap.

[e21meister]

I reckon it's home-made: VW surely wouldn't leave the detents in the doors where the door handles were and 'factory' hatchback/estate to van conversions usually just have pre-cut inserts to block out the windows. Does it have a bulkhead behind the front seats?

[Copey]

thats home made, as above, door handle dents, plus a van version wouldnt have doors, just be a pannel van, def home made

[jrevillug]

Home-made. Factory vans wouldn't have the door gap at the back - and it looks as though the rear windows are just painted white to me.

[Deleted]

I'll add to the home made opinion on this one. I'd expect VW to do things differently and not bother fitting rear doors, let alone leave the handle dents in. The white of the windows looks different to the white of the car which hints at a repaint. However, if the car's solid it could prove a good base to finish off the job properly.

[dave21478]

It is easy to say VW would not fit the rear doors on a van version -but the tooling required to build a 3 door estate shell would cost well beyond the demand for a golf van.
I have seen 5-door factory vans before. You would need to go and see this one to be certain.

[Lawsy]

I would say 99% certain its home brewed, VW never produced the Mk3 golf as a van of that size - the Mk3 golf van was based on the 3dr hatch only - same as the Mk1 and mk2 golfs

the larger van at that time was the caddy, polo fronted...

and to add to above, if leaving doors to open from inside, why remove the external handles and has only had the wiper removed by unbolting, shoudl take the mech out and blank off

could be cool to do like elpassat's van tho, weld up rear doors and do it properly

[Battles]

I wondered if it maybe originated in the Republic, I know that they had loads of 'vans' that were delivered ready to be converted to cars by the end user to keep the tax down.
You just needed windows, seats and door cards.

My mate had an awful (for other reasons) Renault 19 that started life that way.

[hamps]

The skoda felica van was a 5 door, if its very cheap its worth a punt, might be a little rare-bit

[whitbytom]

This is what a genuine Mk3 Golf van looks like:



Having said that, if it's cheap, buy it!

[Garry]

More VW Golf-based commericals

[dungbug]

Jan 26, 2011 8:46:30 GMT Lawsy said:

I would say 99% certain its home brewed, VW never produced the Mk3 golf as a van of that size - the Mk3 golf van was based on the 3dr hatch only - same as the Mk1 and mk2 golfs

the larger van at that time was the caddy, polo fronted..

That's what I thought, never seen a '4 door' Golf van. Looks like a home brew to me.

[hodaz]

I also saw that on Auto Trader and was tempted to have a look, but I'd be scared about where it sat with insurance with it being a car turned into a van, I can see that being a can of worm I wouldn't want to open.

[popuptoaster]

comes up as a golf CL TDI car derived van if you run the reg, maybe its a special order vehicle from VW.

[bortaf]

Factory made possably some countrys gave huge tax breaks on comercial vehicals, sweden is one where you could get a sierra van made out an estate with no back seats, perhap it was the same in Ireland?
here have a taunus van brochure





Land rover used to sell discovery vans as well, you got the rear seat as a factory "extra" and converted back to a car after it was registerd and you'd saved on the new vehical tax ;D

[bortaf]

found this shitroen 4 door car derived van as well