Every May, Dubheads all over California and the surrounding states rush around in a flurry trying to complete their VWs and Audis for the annual New Dimensions charity car show. This year was no different, only this time, BMW and Mini owners also joined in on the chaos. And while 74% of the 178 preregistered vehicles were Volkswagens, it was obvious that this year's gathering was going to be very different.
As with last year's show, the cars were spread across the four baseball fields that make up the Twin Creeks Sports Complex in Sunnyvale, California. In one field were Corrados and Mk1-chassis vehicles. Next were all the Mk2 and Mk3 cars. Across from there were the Mk4s, and in the final field were the VW Passats, BMWs, Audis and Minis. Surprisingly, the latter two fields were the most packed, with the old-school field not housing nearly as many cars as we'd anticipated.
Despite this, Yoko Tan took home the Best of Show award with a little help from Tomas Sport Tuning and his '87 Cabriolet. The blue and chrome 1.8T Cabby with its Schmidt wheels was a worthy winner. In the same field were a couple of other notable cars, such as Eduardo Tayao Jr.'s Zender widebody '87 Scirocco, as well as Furell Autowerks and Mike Tolliver's immaculate '77 Rabbit.
Between the fields we stumbled upon Erickson Motorsports' Mk4 GTI VR6 24v. This VW-backed car is slated to run in the Speed World Challenge Touring Car series this year. Brett Erickson happened to mention he was looking for a wheel sponsor, so if you are a manufacturer interested in helping out, you may want to visit the website at www.ericksonmotorsports.com.
In the Mk4 field, there were more good-looking cars than we could comprehend, with a well-deserved second place finish going to Dan Koenig's whitewall-wearing, surfboard-equipped, pimp-looking Golf that reaped tons of attention from all who walked near it. Dan is the same guy who came up with the idea to cut a set of Porsche 928 club sport wheels into what he calls "P-wheels." In the last of the four fields we spotted Bernie and Kristin Chacon's B5.5 1.8T Passat wagon. The best part wasn't that the car was slammed on Weitec coilovers or the way it tucked the 19-inch Audi A8L rims, but rather the giant rock that held the spec sheet for the car. With all the hard work, the Chacons took home third place in their category, being beaten by James Wei's Passat sedan.
The remainder of the show space was taken up by vendors. The likes of WRD came out with some of its hardcore cars, TJM Motorsport had its 390whp Audi A4, HPA showed off its twin-turbo Golf R32 and Boosted Technology let its new Audis stare at 2Bennett's older ones. Tomas Sport Tuning's Kenneth Orozco even brought the bright yellow '98 GTI we featured in the July '04 issue.
While the New Dimensions show is far from Waterfest proportions, it does draw a considerable number of quality cars. We've come to love this show for many reasons, one of which is its lazy Sunday atmosphere and another is its proximity to Paramount's Great America theme park. If you want to learn more about this show, as well as register for next year's gathering, log on to www.newdimensions.com or www.charityautoshows.com.