Marc van Dalen: “At 13, I hitchhiked to the Spa-Francorchamps circuit from Brussels”

Marc Van Dalen, where are you taking us?

Near Dinant, in the Molignée Valley (Belgium. Editor’s note). A magnificent region often explored by old cars. Its roads suit my 1st generation Golf GTI perfectly. It dates from 1980.

Why this Golf specifically?

The GTI was one of the two triggers of my passion for motorsport with… AUTOhebdo. I read the first issue right down to the name of the printing company. I spent hours devouring this magazine that I stashed under my notebooks. I was able to recite the starting grid of any race F2 with the time of each driver. A free radio station in my neighborhood frequently offered competitions related to motorsport. I won so often that the hosts asked me to stop participating. I had made an arrangement with the manager of a newsagent to read the weekly twelve hours before its release. On Wednesday around 20:30 p.m., I rode around ten kilometers by bike to buy it for him first. I have the entire collection of the magazine since issue 1 (the first number ofSelf was published on February 12, 1976. Editor’s note). Cars have fascinated me since my childhood. My father was a salesman at D'Ieteren (the VW importer for Belgium. Editor’s note). As a child, I often accompanied him. At the time, he sometimes went door-to-door in the evenings in the Brussels region to sell Beetles. I would stay in the car playing with the gear lever for hours. When the Golf GTI arrived, I pestered my father for days so