The ad for today’s GLI discloses that it sat that in a garage for a number of years before being brought back to life. Let’s see if its price is worth it having been woken up like Rip Van Winkle.

If TV infomercials have taught us anything, it’s that offering a little something extra can spur people to scramble to the phone and spend their hard-earned cash before the incredible opportunity vanishes. Operators were standing by.

The seller of last Friday’s offered the factory hardtop with the car — an almost literal “cherry on the top” of what was already a fairly compelling and seemingly only modestly worn little car. Unfortunately, most of you were not impressed with the car’s $6,200 asking price. Not even the “one more thing” top could sway the vote, and in the end, the Miata dropped in a 58 percent No Dice loss.

Now, as we all know, the Miata aped the traditional British or Italian sports car to great success. It did so pretty accurately, albeit without the associated headaches that came with many of those earlier cars. One other way in which the original Miata — and many small sporty cars of its era — differed from its predecessors was through the use of engines with fuel injection and multi-valve heads.

Today, such features are commonplace across cars of almost every description. Back in the ’80s, however, having a 16-valve four-cylinder was unique enough to call for a special badge denoting the feature’s presence.

This has a 16V badge on both its grille and its booty. These announce the upgraded mill under the hood and the ensuing shenanigans of which it is capable. The car also wears an aftermarket nose which gives it a set of Golf-like round headlamps instead of the factory blocks of ice. Driving lights set into the slatted grille also appears to be a bright idea.

According to the ad’s description, the present owner bought the car from its second owner who had parked it in a garage in 2003 and kept it on non-operational registration for years afterward. Since being pulled from the garage and brought back into active duty, it’s seen new fuel pumps, plugs, and ignition components, as well as a new battery and a set of brand new Nittos.

Now that it’s back in the sunlight, it looks pretty good for having been a shut-in for so long.

The black-painted bodywork appears straight and rust-free. Everything seems intact with the exception of the one wiper that serves both sides of the windscreen. The ad calls that a “Scirocco Mk1 single wiper arm” and hopefully it clears enough of the screen that you won’t miss the non-Scirocco style two-arm design the car originally had. Some spotting on the nose and a few chips on the door edges seem to be the major aesthetic issues on the car. Aftermarket wheels underpin and lack their center caps all the way around.

The interior features cloth Recaro buckets up front and a matching bench in the back. The ad says there’s a Momo steering wheel in there somewhere, but the pictures all show the stock VW four-spoke so maybe it’s hiding.

The big news is under the hood. Per the ad, the car was originally powered by an 8V four, but that was replaced by the 16V mill in 1998. The engine was rebuilt at the time and has 70,000 miles on it at present. The rest of the car has 181,000 on the clock and looks to be in fine shape for the years and those miles. A few other mods and updates are noted in the ad, which also confirms the title to be clean and the car to “run strong.”

What might you pay for so classic a GLI, especially one that seems to have been massaged in all the right places? The seller is asking $4,200 for the car which puts us in the position of gauging that price against the car as it’s presented in the ad. What do you say, is this 16V worth that $4,200 asking? Or, does that price have you thinking this GLI can GTFO?

You decide!

Los Angeles, California, , or go if the ad disappears.

H/T to Phil R. for the hookup!

Help me out with NPOND. Hit me up at and send me a fixed-price tip. Remember to include your Kinja handle.