drive one before you buy one.

if you are a press on driver you will not be impressed, its a bit like driving a powerfull sponge pudding. Nice engine, quite quickand silcky smooth but as soon as you want to drive it hard on the corners the suspension lets you down, soft, bouncy, arm fulls of understeer and smoking brakes if you take it on a track.

they all tend to have high mileage, even 5 years ago it was hard to find one < 100k miles. Last one I sold was a 98-R Hi line 1 owner fsh 90k miles lovely old thing sold it for £2.5k had loads of life left in it, 180k no problem if fsh and looked after.

If you find any that have sub 100k miles and does not have fully documented history (old mots bills etc) it will almost certainly have been clocked, so lookout for shiney steering wheels, worn smooth gearnob, worn pedal rubbers and freyed seat belts. Mk3 Golfs are more than capable of 200k+ miles with no problem hence lots of clocked ones....