Citi, is that you? Volkswagen Golf GTI rendered with Mk1 design cues!

A digital artist has reimagined the recently revealed Volkswagen Golf 8 GTI as a retro-styled three-door model drawing loose inspiration from the Mk1 GTI.

Created by Nikita Chuyko and published on Russian automotive website kolesa.ru, the renders show what the eight-generation Golf GTI might have looked like were VW to have applied a smattering of decidedly retro styling cues.

Chuyko drew particular inspiration from the Mk1 GTI released in 1976, two years after the original Golf hit the market (that body shell, of course, soldiered on in South Africa as the Citi Golf for many years).

Take a gander at the renders and you’ll notice the round twin headlamps as well as the vertically arranged indicators up front. Then there are the low-sited taillamps and large screen round back. And, of course, the three-door body configuration, something VW has scrapped with the latest eighth-generation model.

Back in January 2019, a report out of Germany suggested VW was developing a new “Golf Light”, with the accompanying rendering also incorporating Mk1 styling elements. The news was exciting for South Africans who fell in love with the Citi Golf produced at Uitenhage from 1984 until 2009, although we’ve not heard anything else on the topic since…