bang for buck is a big statement! what people are paying up to 5 grand for a decent G, for that price you could for example buy something such as a mk1 golf with the 1.8 20vt conversion that would be bang for buck, or even a starlet glanza, more achievable power for price and more reliable.

the prices of g40's reflect the classic and rare (ish) status of the car, at the end of the day your paying a lot of money for what is essentially any other 1.3 polo coupe with a supercharger and arch trims.

£5k for a decent G40....not since I've been here. Good G40's are £2-3k.

haha you seen the g40 on pistonheads that he wants 5k for! good luck!

james when mine is done i will take you out for a spin, but do not expect it to come cheap!

you know how much i have spent on mine and the fact i just never have it running.

But then again not everyone goes as far as i do.

people call my car a bag of shite (it does look like one) but i will defend her to the earth. she means so much to me, normally i get bored of cars really quickly and move on, this is the first one that just keeps surprising me and i have not got bored of and am showing no signs of being bored!

My bf (mk3iain) has been wanting a G40 for ages, then when he wrote off his rover I told him to get one! He was umming and arring at first as having a fairly new car with good mpg and next to no problems at all he was tempted to get another until I gave him an ear bashing!

He does still miss the reliability/smoothness of a new car but I know he would have regretted it dearly if he didn't buy the g40 he has now which is the high spec model

I agree that if you really want one you should really get one!

they are great fun for what they are a 1.3 grandpa wagon with a flying machine under the bonnet.

compared to modern stuff they are not amazingly fast, but you can spec them up fairly easily.

think if you drove modern stuff all your days then went out bought a tuned one it would be a right off within a few months (especially in the wet).

combination of "interesting" handling and learn how to brake character make life fun.

its all about the G smile and the noises it makes.

i went the fox/genesis Gt G40 route as alot of other people have done and i think that helped alot as you know how far you can push each model.

working on them can be fun as the engione bays well packed.

^^^^ G smiles.Thats what its all about imo.

i went the fox/genesis Gt G40 route as alot of other people have done and i think that helped alot as you know how far you can push each model.

A good point that seems to have been over-looked in the thread. Think most people who own a g40 have had a Polo before.

I have taken all my previous polos as far as i felt was reasonable. I only bought a g40 as I wanted a shit hot engine before I began spending thousands on chasis etc. G40 is a natural progression for those who have outgrown their engines but not Polos.

PS - 3 people saw my G40 today and everybody was completely amazed with what engine it has. 'Grannys pension wagon' with a supercharger is a crazy concept for most. Ultimate sleeper. Especially the 200bhp ones which have the ability to upset alot of modern cars. That alone is worth the money.

And 5k for a G40? I never seen that. As far as I know I think I paid the most for a G40.

there is only a select few jokers who ask for around the 5k mark. there has been a few recently that white one which was a conversion and the bloke wanted a fortune and a red one with painted bits in the bay and leather interior. dreamers prices as far as I'm concerned am sure they were nice cars but i hate it when people say 'the parts alone add up to....' what? like i should thank you for that and pay you it all back???.

i'd however pay 4-5k for a super rare low milage totally original one though.

I think I paid £4.6k for mine but that was nearly 11 years ago and it was my first and only Polo, before it I had a 1.3 mk2 Golf.

I've got a 180BHP Ibiza Cupra as my current daily car. It's a lot faster than my near standard G40 but I still think the G40 is more fun to drive (and from a 50mph rolling start in 5th the Polo would have it easily). A G40 is quite a simple car design compared to modern stuff and it's easy to maintain yourself if you're reasonably competent. I've done 50K miles in the G40 (it was my main car for several years) and the only time it let me down was when the clutch cable broke. Only downside is my previous tuned G40 cost more to insure 3rd party, fire and theft (group 15, valued at less than £2K) than the Cupra costs fully comp (group 16, valued at £14K)

I had a small run in down a dual carriageway with a base model Lotus Elise when I was in the near standard G40. He eventually crawled passed me but there was basically nothing in it. The fact that he got ahead doesn't matter; how did he explain to his girlfriend in the passenger seat that he was having to race a 15 year old shopping car in his £23K sports car? It's not quite the same in the Ibiza.

Edited 29 December, 200718 yr by G40Supercharged

Hang on why all the sudden talk of paying 5 grand for a G40? I can't see the relevance to the original question.

The first person to mention 5k for a G40 was doug123 for some reason, I dunno why he said that? Sooped_up_g then went on to mention one thats for sale on Pistonheads. Only optima had previously stated that some people are spending 5k on high powered engines which if they totalled it up they probably are. He never said a good G40 costs 5k.

Lets face it they are expensive for what they are. Yeah you can pick up a nice example for around 2k, but most people are gonna then spend at least another couple of grand sorting out and upgrading the chassis, brakes and more than likely the engine. Its all par for the course with G40 ownership, you don't just buy one and change the oil and plugs once a year for a service.

haha you seen the g40 on pistonheads that he wants 5k for! good luck!

james when mine is done i will take you out for a spin

thanks mate

Edited 29 December, 200718 yr by james23

Hang on why all the sudden talk of paying 5 grand for a G40? I can't see the relevance to the original question.

The first person to mention 5k for a G40 was doug123 for some reason, I dunno why he said that? Sooped_up_g then went on to mention one thats for sale on Pistonheads. Only optima had previously stated that some people are spending 5k on high powered engines which if they totalled it up they probably are. He never said a good G40 costs 5k.

Lets face it they are expensive for what they are. Yeah you can pick up a nice example for around 2k, but most people are gonna then spend at least another couple of grand sorting out and upgrading the chassis, brakes and more than likely the engine. Its all par for the course with G40 ownership, you don't just buy one and change the oil and plugs once a year for a service.

Exactly, buying the car is just the start. When you also take into account the cost of insurance, people don't realise just how much money you can end up spending on these cars.

Award for the most unreliable goes to me! 4 years of ownership nearly! And it just continues to break random things!

this is what really makes me laugh about this site, people come on here asking about tuning a 1 litre mk3 polo and get told its not worth spending all that money on trying to improve a shit engine when they could just fit a gt lump in it...

yet you have the same people spending silly amounts just to bring the handling on there G40 up to scratch.

if i was gonna spend 2-3k on a hot hatch i'd buy a an R5gtt for about a grand, put the rest aside for spare head gaskets, then spend my day showing up G40s

but on a serious note, by the time i can afford to insure and run a G40 i want to be driving a proper car, at least i could fit the double buggy in the boot of a 280 brake scooby, that would cost about the same as a G40 and i could use it as a daily driver, now thats bang for buck

this is what really makes me laugh about this site, people come on here asking about tuning a 1 litre mk3 polo and get told its not worth spending all that money on trying to improve a shit engine when they could just fit a gt lump in it...

yet you have the same people spending silly amounts just to bring the handling on there G40 up to scratch.

if i was gonna spend 2-3k on a hot hatch i'd buy a an R5gtt for about a grand, put the rest aside for spare head gaskets, then spend my day showing up G40s

but on a serious note, by the time i can afford to insure and run a G40 i want to be driving a proper car, at least i could fit the double buggy in the boot of a 280 brake scooby, that would cost about the same as a G40 and i could use it as a daily driver, now thats bang for buck

You should fit a GT motor into the scooby, don't bother wasting your time on the original engine

but i don't have a gt engine or a scooby

i got 3 mates that have them and use them as daily drives and have never had any problems with them (although one did blow a gear box, but he was ragging the living shit out of it like a fool ), how many G40 owners can say they use there car as a daily without and major costs?

but i don't have a gt engine or a scooby

i got 3 mates that have them and use them as daily drives and have never had any problems with them (although one did blow a gear box, but he was ragging the living shit out of it like a fool ), how many G40 owners can say they use there car as a daily without and major costs?

errr, I can, I did 20k in my first year of owning the polo, running around 145bhp. Although in the second year, i did 2.5k

ok mr henry you got me

all i was trying to put across is there are much better cars out there for the money, now badge snobbery aside can any one argue with that?

Better in what way?

It all depends what you look for in a car.

if i hadn't changed my post before posting it would of said that in it, dam

i did 12k a year in a g40 for 5 years and aside from minor points (ecu relay failing) mine never let me down!

theres only really 2 reasons to buy a G40, one is the badge, the other is the charger (before people start ranting about superior build quality, remember they were built by the spainish). if you were looking for a proper hot hatch you'd be looking at stuff like the 205 GTI. standard for standard these will out handle and out brake a G40 and make it look like a tranny van in comparison, and of the 2 my step dad has had known let him down in any way, and he only paid 900 for his totally standard and unmodified 1.9 he has know.

and if you wanna stick with the badge the mk1 gti is far superior to the G40, it just hasn't got the look at me i have a super charger factor

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