Your fleet running reports

[Swervin_Mervin]

125i gone. Replacement not arrived. Bums

Sold the 125i in the end for just £1700 less than we paid for it 3.5yrs ago - pretty good I reckon

[Sundayjumper]

Wokingham ? That’s about 10 mins from here, you could have popped in and helped me getting the engine out of Compact #2

D11F8E73-2BEB-4C4A-A2C6-0DA44BCA014C.jpeg (176.59 KiB) Viewed 2826 times

[Rich B]

I thought Lupo GTis were all in the hands of fan boys. If you got it for the right price (which I’ve no doubt you did), fix it, shine it up and it’ll get snapped up.

[Matty]

Bought another car today, I’ve been looking for one for a while and saw this on eBay yesterday, went down this morning to pick it up. I think they are a cast iron future classic, bespoke aluminium panels, NA engine, manual gearbox and low build numbers.

They tend to suffer from chocolate gearboxes and engines that burn oil, I’ve bought this knowing it needs an engine rebuild and paid a price that reflects this-

136,000 miles, 6 speed box, xenons, aircon so no sunroof and I think I’ve saved it from being ruined as it already had a few choice mods like a sticker bombed rear badge and a horrendous Sony double din headunit.

Nice

No need to worry about the gearbox, the "reputation" was the the non-GTi 5-speed. Both the 5-speed and 6-speed in the GTi didn't have the issues AFAIK, neither did it suffer from the pedal box issue.

Check the bonnet is actually aluminium, BTW - you can't get them anymore, so any damaged-replacements were steel.

Unless things have changed recently, there are no real "watch out for X" with the LupoGTi's. They're generally considered to be very reliable, but as mentioned, most have been fiddled with so a good, standard example is a rare thing these days. They hold their price well if looked after.

[Nic]

The blue is the most sort after colour I think, I’d have a white one but they didn’t make them in white

Steve, Winnersh, did you see it on eBay? It was a flying visit, the lad selling it had bought it 3 weeks ago unaware that they suffer engine issues, didn’t realise it was smoking (how the hell he didn’t I have no idea) brought it home and more or less lost his shit and just wanted it gone. He was proper angry when myself and a friend turned up and warned us not to do the good cop/bad cop routine on him

Rich, I think I stole it, but then I was the only person to turn up rather than try and buy it via a shitty offer by text.

Matty, bonnet is ali, first thing I checked, no accident damage that I can see, all the bolts holding the wings on haven’t been touched, panel gaps are all good. Stupid sound system will be ripped out at some point and some bellend has glued leather over the cloth on the door cards, other than that untouched.

Estimating around £1000 in repairs at the moment, will keep it to run about in for a while and then either in to a carcoon or for sale.

[Matty]

They didn't do many colours - Red, Black and Silver were the only launch colours, they added in Raven Blue and a Anthracite (dark metallic grey) later down the line. The latter two are rarer and usually more sought after. Andy Woodhall (AndyW) who used to be a forum regular in the EVO days still owns his Anthracite GTi, must have had it 10 years now.

Lupo GTi's at launch they were about £13k, you could spec them to £16k, which was a massive amount of cash in 1999 - that's £22k in todays money, considering the Up GTi is only £13k now....

A colleague had a Lupi GTi. I remember being astonished at how well it handled and the level of grip.

The handling was OK (overshadowed by the 106GTi, and later the Mini Cooper) but the grip was largely down to the fact they were shod in a odd-sized 205 width tyre, giving limited choices and they were relatively expensive!

[integrale_evo]

Smaller Italian size plate fitted to the mito, trimmed to fit the molded lump on the bumper so a could ditch the huge lump of plastic that fills the whole side of the bumper to fit a uk one.

[scotta]

Bought another car today, I’ve been looking for one for a while and saw this on eBay yesterday, went down this morning to pick it up. I think they are a cast iron future classic, bespoke aluminium panels, NA engine, manual gearbox and low build numbers.

They tend to suffer from chocolate gearboxes and engines that burn oil, I’ve bought this knowing it needs an engine rebuild and paid a price that reflects this-

136,000 miles, 6 speed box, xenons, aircon so no sunroof and I think I’ve saved it from being ruined as it already had a few choice mods like a sticker bombed rear badge and a horrendous Sony double din headunit.

Nice

No need to worry about the gearbox, the "reputation" was the the non-GTi 5-speed. Both the 5-speed and 6-speed in the GTi didn't have the issues AFAIK, neither did it suffer from the pedal box issue.

Check the bonnet is actually aluminium, BTW - you can't get them anymore, so any damaged-replacements were steel.

Unless things have changed recently, there are no real "watch out for X" with the LupoGTi's. They're generally considered to be very reliable, but as mentioned, most have been fiddled with so a good, standard example is a rare thing these days. They hold their price well if looked after.

I had a go in one as a courtesy car when they were new. Loved it.

[nuttinnew]

They’re 185/65/15. Unusually for “proper” tyres these ones are denoted in the normal way.

Just a thought, were 6" winter alloys available? They tend to come in some odd sizes so 6x15 might be too normal for them
If not, steels it'll have to be





Nic; excellent purchasement
The doors should also be ali, and the glass thinner than a normal (but you know this already ).
(A 1.6 and six speed 'box would work well in an A2...).




_evo; that looks much better.

[Nic]

I knew about the wings and bonnet, wasn’t aware about the doors or the thinner glass.

Currently investigating cams and bigger pistons if the block needs to come out, I reckon another 20/25 bhp would be perfect in one of these.

106 GTi/Rallye will no doubt be sweeter handling but finding one in good condition is probably the issue with those now. I’ve had a cooper s which I really enjoyed so it will be interesting to see how this is after it’s fixed, my only experience was a test drive when they were new.

[Sundayjumper]

Steve, Winnersh, did you see it on eBay?

Only after you'd posted and mentioned Reading I figured there's not many of these around so went for a quick look for it. Not my cup of tea (it's not silver, for a start) but I'll be interested to see what you do with the engine.

I'm in Owlsmoor, FWIW.

[Nic]

There doesn’t appear to be much tuning stuff for them, I’d have thought cams and a decat would be free available on eBay but nothing on there. Matty, any suggestions?

[Nathan]

1.8T

[integrale_evo]

Throttlebodies

[Nic]

1.8T

Already ruined one car

[Nic]

Throttlebodies

Are more than I paid for it I’d have thought cams are around £400, exhaust manifold £200/250 and a decat or sportscat with suitable remap would get it near 150 bhp. See how it goes.

[nuttinnew]

^ A chap on a Lupo forum had itbs, standalone management, a flowed head, and 170bhp as a result.

I can't remember if Cat Cams do anything. Schrick probably do.

If you started down that road, where would you end? "I might as well get it balanced while it's out, with a lightened flywheel, so it'd be stupid not to do the clutch while I'm at it, etc...etc..."

[ste]

Just fix the broken Nic. Any NA tuning you do will be costly, give insignificant gains and will make it worth less when you come to sell it next week.

[Matty]

Forgot to mention about checking the doors. VW really did alot of work on the LupoGTi - it's a *significantly* different car to the standard Lupo's, both costmetically and under the skin. I suspect alot of it is off the back of the old ADAC Lupo Cup.

There doesn’t appear to be much tuning stuff for them, I’d have thought cams and a decat would be free available on eBay but nothing on there. Matty, any suggestions?

They don't tune very well. I'm kinda out of the loop (heh) these days, but a quick look over on that dodgy ClubLupo site says that, other than the obvious 1.8T or TB option (which is pretty extreme investment) then the usual manifold/exhaust/intake options can throw an extra 10bhp, cams and a remap on top can get you close to 150bhp.

With the short ratios of the 6 speed (bearing in mind the 6th is geared the same as the old 5th in top, it wasn't just an extra cog slapped on) it should be fairly lively with 150bhp.

[Mike1215]

1.8T

Already ruined one car