Good cars imo i have an mk1 estate version for my family wagon and even that goes fairly well- nothing special but with a few relatively cheaply breathing mods as pani-k has listed they go very nicely and the 2litre altough not being hugely more powerful than the 1800 in terms of peak bhp it has much better low to mid range torque.
mine just a ST170 box and feed with a bluefin to perk it up a bit and has 150ft lbs of torque.