Robert McBurney (1939 – 2005) from Ballymena, County Antrim, deserves our recognition for making the right-hand-drive Golf GTI accessible in Ireland and Britain. Without Robert’s initiative in 1976, especially when Volkswagen in Wolfsburg said it couldn’t be done, we would never have seen the “King of the Hot Hatches” in these islands.
Robert McBurney was from Ballymena, a market town in the centre of Northern Ireland, situated between Belfast and Derry. After completing his Mechanical Engineering degree at Belfast Technical College, Robert honed his mechanical skills at his father’s Volkswagen dealership, Harryville Garage, established in 1926 on Bridge Street. His father, Roger, had the foresight to acquire one of the first VW dealerships in Ireland in 1953 and Robert soon became an expert in all things VW.
Robert’s rally career began at age eleven when his father took him on the Ulster Automobile Club’s Rally in a Singer car. According to Robert, “In those days, the rallies were mainly driving tests and ascents up muddy lanes. Myself and others bounced up and down in the back to get traction. Other tricks included putting water oil the tyres for extra weight and bolting the tyres onto the wheels so that they could run flat for more grip”.
In 1957, he began rallying with his school friend Derek Surgenor. On his first attempt as a driver in the 1959 Circuit of Ireland, they won the Novice Award.
During the rally, near Leenane County Mayo, Robert’s parked car was rear-ended at a control point, causing significant damage to the windscreen and bodywork. As there were no servicing facilities at the time, a helpful local priest passed by in his Beetle. Robert asked to borrow the priest’s windscreen and with the priest’s kind agreement, he swiftly replaced his broken one. Robert later returned the favour and delivered a new windscreen to the priest the following week.
At the age of 20, he became Ulster Rally Champion in 1959 and achieved this title four more times. He collaborated with various co-drivers, including Frank Main, Dr. Beatty Crawford, and Terry Harryman.
Being a renowned VW expert, he skilfully fitted a Porsche Super 90 SC engine into the Volkswagen, leading to victories across Ireland, including the Circuit of Munster, Circuit of Down and the Red Hackle and Snowman rallies in Scotland.
McBurney and Reggie McSpadden finished 21st driving a VW in the 1965 RAC rally. In the 1968 Circuit of Ireland, they achieved an impressive 4th place overall with a Lancia Fulvia. Then, in 1970, partnering with Norman Smith in a BMW 2002ti, he secured another 4th position in the Circuit. One of his greatest achievements was finishing 3rd overall in the 1970 Scottish Rally, behind the Works cars of Paddy Hopkirk and Brian Culceth.
Now we go back to the Golf GTI (Grand Turismo Injection) story. By 1974, despite Volkswagen’s unsuccessful attempts to create and then sell sporty versions of the Beetle, some within the company recognised the potential of the new Golf hatchback to be more than a family hatchback. VW Press Department head Anton Konrad and engineer Alfons Löwenberg took the initiative to create what was initially known internally as the ‘Sport Golf,’ despite opposition from senior management.
When Konrad and Löwenberg first created the original Sport Golf, it was more of a “skunkworks” project, something done on a Saturday afternoon. When the VW senior management heard about the GTI spec’d Golf, they reluctantly agreed to let the project proceed. Common thinking in VW at that time was that it was a niche car and that very few would ever be sold, perhaps just 5,000.
And the rest of the development story is history as the Sport Golf became the Golf GTI and was launched in June 1976 fitted with the E287 engine producing 110 hp and with a golf ball fitted to the top of the gear stick, VW sold 30,000 cars in the first year.
However, with a brief production run, the possibility of having a right-hand drive version seemed unlikely at the time. While the regular Golf was already available in Ireland and Britain, VW’s German engineers believed that converting this new fuel-injected model to RHD would not only be cost-prohibitive but might also be physically challenging or even impossible.
“At the time, Volkswagen Beetles reigned supreme in Irish rallying……. Everybody was clamouring to get a Golf GTI in right-hand drive” recalls Beatty Crawford. “But the Germans said no, and if you’ve ever dealt with Germans in business, once they make their minds up, that’s it. It’s very difficult to turn a German!”
But Robert McBurney had other ideas and while he did want to compete in rallies, he also wanted to remain loyal to VW and his family car dealership. However, at that time, VW lacked competitive performance options in comparison to rallying powerhouses like Ford.
And Robert’s response to the German’s saying no? He raided the spare parts catalogue at his Volkswagen dealership and went ahead and built his own right-hand drive GTI.
Reggie McSpadden head of VW sales at Agnew’s in Belfast, offered up his wife’s RHD Golf as a donor car and in the workshop with the two cars side-by-side they produced a RHD Golf GTI rally car.
In his dealings with senior management at Volkswagen headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, Reggie McSpadden, mentioned that an Irish-built right-hand-drive GTI was being constructed and response given was that that idea was physically impossible.
But McBurney did build it and he did rally it and after his remarkable achievement of securing a second-in-class result with his home-built Golf GTI in the challenging Circuit of Ireland rally, news of his rallying success reached Volkswagen. They were so impressed that they summoned the Irish GTI team and their right-hand drive rally car to the factory in Wolfsburg, Germany. “They couldn’t believe it. But once they saw the car in front of them, they had to believe it,” says Crawford.
Unfortunately, despite their positive impression of the RHD McBurney Golf GTI there was very little if any formal recognition from Volkswagen for the engineering prowess of Robert and his team.
In the first year of launch in Ireland and Britain they sold 1,500 RHD cars Powered by a 1,588 cc, four-cylinder engine producing 110 bhp, this car could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in an impressive nine seconds. The King of the Hot Hatches was here to stay!
More than four decades later, the Golf GTI is still in production and has surpassed two million units sold globally.
Ireland’s unsung hero of the RHD Golf GTI – Robert McBurney.
Information sources:
6-Volttia Productions
Adrian Flux
Bryce Sands Photography
Derek Smyth
Dungannon Motor Club
ewrc-results.com
Rally.ie
