Finally bought a MKIII!

[Jebus]

Man, you gotta stop bitching about how it looks. It looks GREAT. Even in these pics. you call average. Is the noise from the dash a waterfall noise?? I wont go into it as im sure you will find out soon enough. lol. Just keep an eye on the engine and try to find out some truth about the history of the engine.
mge and mgte are strong engines, the internals are great. They do have head gasket problems but it is usually related or cause by bad maintence, specifically cooling system. Dont put water in it, use good coolant, replace pipes and lines as they need to be, like any other engine, and it will be fine. They are old engines, were pretty advanced for there time, and who would have thought 20 years ago when they were released that water could kill an engine?? But when maintained, will last as long as any engine in this day.
Good luck with your car. And i'd like to see a few different shots of that front bar, looks nice.