About a month and a half after the Golf was taken out, I bought a new car.

So remember how like four months ago I said “Next up… Watch this space”? This took a little longer to put together than I hoped it would because… Well, I’m lazy, but here it is.

TL;DR - I bought a 2004 VW Bora Sport with a PD130 engine. It was a bit of a chavved up mess and I fixed it. The end.

If you’ve got some time, read on!

Buying the Bora
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16/10/2018
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I found a VW Bora for sale on Facebook Marketplace.

I ran the number plate to get the spec of the car along with MOT history and a HPI check. This all came up pretty good.

As you’ll see below, it was pretty distastefully modified. The good side of this was that I could use the stupid shit to knock the price down.

17/10/2018
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I went to see it that evening, about a 1.5h drive from home at the other side Devon. My father drove me up so that I could drive the car back if I bought it.

It was dark by the time we got there which I wasn’t happy about, but I had brought bright lights to inspect the car and my laptop to find fault codes.

The body was in very good condition for the age. The only issue I could spot was the minuscule beginnings of a rust bubble on a rear arch, one or two small stone chips on one of the skirts, and a tiny dink on the os/r door.

After scanning the car’s control modules for any issues I found there was an intermittent issue with one of the rear parking sensors and a constant issue with the driver’s side door module, which meant the car didn’t know when that door was open or not. Not a big issue and not hard to resolve.

I was happy with the car and bought it, after knocking the price down by 30% of course!

About the Bora
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The car is a 2004 VW Bora Sport with the PD130 (ASZ) engine.

Spec
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Hard to know what to list here, I don’t want to waste time and space by listing every feature it has so I’ll just include some of the things that were more “fancy” at the time of production, as things like ABS, TCS, ESP, A/C, alarm & central locking, all electric windows, etc. are relatively basic.

Cruise control.
8-speaker audio system. It’s surprisingly great for a factory audio system.
Automatic windscreen wipers.
Automatic dimming rearview mirror.
Leather seats with adjustable lumbar support.
Heated seats.
Rear parking sensors.
Factory GPS navigation.

Past, present and future
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Before purchase (01/12/04 - 16/10/2018)
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I’m the 4th owner of the vehicle. Doesn’t feel as special as it did on the Golf, of which I was the second owner.

It’s had a patchy service history but I’ve spent some time tracking down the history at a number of garages around the UK including Wales, the East Midlands, Bristol, North Devon, and a few other places.

After a bit of investigation, the service history isn’t as awful as the paperwork suggests, and the relatively low mileage brings me some confidence that there’s still a good chance to take care of it properly and keep it going for a long time to come.

As you’ll see in the list below, it had been pretty distastefully modified, but there were some silver linings to the cloud of distaste.

Revo remap by GotBoost Performance, producing 171hp and 302lb/ft (from stock figures of 130hp and 229lb/ft).
Slammed on unknown coilovers. It knocked and scraped on everything.
Aftermarket mini-ducktail spoiler.
Audi TT front anti-roll bar.
BBS Super RS reps.
Gold “JDM” gear knob.
Philips double DIN touchscreen head unit.
Muffler delete (straight pipe cat-back).
5% tint on the 3 rear windows.
Hekko wind deflectors all round.
US-spec front bumper.
US-spec rear lights.
Dual-driver subwoofer.

Upon purchase (17/10/2018)
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There were a few issues upon purchasing, which I was aware of and partially how I managed to persuade the seller to give me such a large discount.

Rust bubbling on offside rear wheel arch.
Stone chips on nearside skirt.
Dink on os/r door.
1 of 4 rear parking sensors is faulty.
Offside front door control module is dead.
Driveshafts are completely shagged due to how low the car is.
Air from the vents smelled disgusting, regardless of set temperature, mode or A/C state.
Squealing whilst steering at low revs (auxiliary belt tensioner).
Driver’s window switches didn’t work for one-touch up/down on both offside and nearside front windows (rears are not one-touch).
Front top mounts were shagged, along with one of the rear top mounts which I did not originally realise.

After purchase (17/10/2018 - Present)
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I carried out a number of repairs and upgrades after buying the car.

I’ve detailed these in a separate post as adding them to this post would’ve made it far too long; I often find large blog posts off-putting unless I’m actually learning something, so I try to keep these as short as possible (although this is already a far cry from “short”).

Anyway, check it out if you’re interested:

Upgrading and Repairing the Bora

18 February 2019·479 words·3 mins

And finally, here are some photos from after I fixed it up a bit and de-chavved it: