The last place I thought I'd be in March was Sweden. All that Sweden has to offer that time of year is moose, snow, and frozen bikini models. Well, maybe a drunken Elvis impersonator who happens to stumble into your hotel lobby and proceed to sing to you, but that's it.
OK, I suppose when you get down to it, there's also Dahlback Racing.
Dahlback Racing, otherwise known in the United States as "the mysterious shop with a black Golf that shoots flames from its side-mounted exhaust," is located in Borlange, Sweeden, which is the last bastion of life when you head north from Stockholm. Once you pass Borlange, there is nothing. Just snow and a very cold moose or two.
Before I get too far into the ins and outs of Dahlback, let me clarify what will be the first subject for debate, the cover blurb. To answer the question on everyone's minds: Yes, the infamous Golf may be able to put out 1,200 horsepower. Possibly. The story that comes from Hans Dahlback, the owner of Dahlback Racing and the mastermind behind these insane cars, is that the car, when running on a dyno that bolts to the hubs, produced well over 850 hp to the wheels at around 8,000 rpm before the dyno started reading errors--and the car revs to upward of 11,000 rpm. Using a 15 percent drivetrain-loss calculation, at 8,000 rpm the car was over 1,000 flywheel horsepower. I'm making an educated guess that the car produced another few ponies in the 3,000 rpm that followed.
Considering Dahlback claims the motor pulls strong until just under 11,000 rpm--with the power increasing dramatically in the last couple thousand rpm--it's reasonable to assume, considering the extent the motor's power curve was climbing at the point the dyno stopped reading, that the car would have likely gained another 100 or 200 horses in the remaining available revs. You also have to keep in mind that Dahlback massively underpromises any horsepower claim. I was told by various people at Dahlback's shop that the Golf was producing significantly more than 850 wheel horsepower on the dyno, but Dahlback would only confirm 850-plus hp, and thus that is what I worked my calculations from.
And yes, the car shoots flames out the side exit exhaust during deceleration.
It was snowing most of the time I was in Sweden, so I didn't get to go for a ride in the monster Golf, but I did watch quite a bit of track footage of the car running in Stockholm--from what I saw, the car most definitely produces 1,200 hp. What I did get to do, however, was rip the nose piece off the Golf, put the car on a lift, and investigate why this VW is so freaking fast.
Peering though the windows I noticed the interior looked like any normal Golf that was prepared to race in any series in the world--in other words, it's very impressive. There is a full rollcage, two race seats, a full carbon-fiber dash (molded to look just like the Mk IV's), a fire-suppression system, a giant knob that's labeled "Boost," and a huge scoop that protrudes from the roof, funneling air into the back. In the back I found a radiator and a giant canister of oil for the dry sump setup.
Pulling the nose off the car and popping the hood revealed that the rollcage passes through the firewall and into the engine compartment. The cage wraps around the front of the car, and connected to it is a longitudinally-mounted, five-cylinder Audi motor that powers the monster. The front of the car also showcases an intercooler setup that was a million miles away from anything I'd ever seen. There is a front-mounted intercooler, but attached to that on the driver's side of the car is a vertical intercooler that runs the height of the motor. Dahlback claims this setup works, and honestly, I can't argue with the results I saw.
With the car on the lift, it suddenly became apparent the Golf is much more than a motor swap and gobs of horsepower. The chassis looks nothing like that of a Golf. This Golf, which, incidentally, was apparently the first Golf IV in Sweden and started its life with a lowly 1.6L I-4 powerplant, utilizes fully independent suspension both front and rear. The suspension design is similar at all four corners, meaning the rear suspension has been changed to a McPherson strut design. The sway bars on the car are giant, being held by seemingly primitive clamps from a hardware store, but it seems to work.
The dry-sump oil setup uses huge oil lines that pass though an oil filter that used to call a Volvo truck its home, and then travels to an oil canister in the trunk. While I was admiring the dry-sump setup, I stumbled upon the rear differential, which is chilled via an oil cooler mounted off the rear bumper--this has to be one of the only rear differential coolers I've seen in my life.
And that's not to mention the Audi all-wheel-drive system that somehow found itself bolted to the underside of the Golf.
All the wheels on the car are BBS but aren't as wide as you'd think -- what with the flared body on the car. In fact, the car only uses 245/40-18 Bridgestone Potenza RE-540S tires, but Dahlback claimed he was going to try to fit wider tires pretty soon--possibly 295s--and according to Dahlback, the Golf shouldn't need any modifications to fit the meatier rubber. After not believing him, I checked the tire-to-strut clearance on all four wheels and sure enough, there's tons of room.
I must have spent a solid hour under the car, walking back and forth, admiring all the hard work Dahlback put into it. But as soon as I climbed out from under the Golf, I stumbled upon an Audi Ur quattro. The Audi sported similar modifications as the Golf, but to a somewhat lesser degree. Under the hood resides the same five-cylinder motor producing roughly 700 hp, according to Dahlback. Inside the car is a rollcage, fire-suppression system, and various other modifications that make the car seem like it means trouble. Looking under this car proved extremely interesting, as I found many modifications that were similar to the Golf, only one step better. For instance, the Golf's sway bars were attached to the car via the aforementioned clamps, but this Audi sported almost identical bars, only they were connected via machined brackets. The independent suspension, including the strut mounts, were just like those on the Golf, but the parts seemed like they'd evolved since Dahlback pieced together the Golf.
Also in the shop was a 650-hp Audi RS4 with a fully built motor, a 550-hp Audi TT with a built motor, and an old Audi 80 that was in the process of receiving a built five-cylinder motor, a full rollcage, raised suspension points, and nearly everything else the Ur quattro had, except this engine was only going to pump out 500 hp. When I asked Dahlback what his idea of a built RS4 motor was, he started spouting off words such as rods, pistons, valves, piping and the like. Basically, the only thing stock on most of the motors Dahlback Racing builds is the block itself--and if he could replace that, I suspect he would.
The reason I was standing in Dahlback Racing's shop was thanks to the folks at TJM Motorsport. TJM, which is the official U.S. importer of all Dahlback's products, called me out of the blue earlier this year and invited me to a take-no-prisoners, haul-ass, four-day, whirlwind trip to beautiful Borlange to meet Hans Dahlback. The purpose of the trip, or so I thought, was to either dispel the rumors that the Golf is a myth and doesn't really exist, or to tell the American public that the Golf is really some kind of Swedish anomaly that was the result of eating too much horse sausage and Kalles caviar. Although I'm convinced the Golf is indeed a product of too much caviar in a tube, I can attest to the car's existence and to the fact that it runs. In fact, while I was photographing various parts of the shop, or the Golf itself, Dahlback cranked the ignition and drove the car rather than pushing it where I needed it. This alone is a testament to the car's durability.
When I asked if the Golf broke a lot, Dahlback explained that with the exception of the car snapping a couple of axles on the dragstrip, and then there was that pesky transmission-falling-out episode, the car runs exceptionally well. Now I've probably piqued your interest about the quarter-mile time this car can pump out. Dahlback was quick to point out the car is designed to road race, not drag race, and consequently, the car suffers a little when it comes to running the 1320. Dahlback claims his 0-60 mph times are in the 2.5- to 3.5-second range, but once he has to start shifting through third, fourth, and fifth gears, he has traction problems. Every shift apparently kicks the car sideways if the surface isn't completely smooth. The result is a low 12-second pass, hitting the traps at around 150 mph. That kind of trap speed shows that the car should be close to eight-second quarter-mile times. The reason the 0-60 mph times are so low, however, is more than likely due to two factors. One, the gearing of the car in first and second is probably tall enough to allow all the tires to grip, but once the car hits third through sixth, the gearing is tight enough that the car is always on boost. And two, when the car attempted the quarter mile, it was more than likely using high levels of boost, whereas the 0-60 times were probably done at lower boost levels to achieve the best times. The car is also road-raced at lower boost levels in order to keep the 3,000-pound gorilla under control.
According to Dahlback, the Ur quattro produced 0-60 mph times consistently under four seconds when a European magazine was testing the car. Dahlback said that no matter whether the car was launched at a high enough rpm to spin all four tires or the motor was lugged and then the car came under boost later, the Audi would click off almost the exact same acceleration times. That's pretty impressive stuff.
The trick to making super-cars such as these is not to just to make custom, high-horsepower, breathtaking yet unachievable cars, and Dahlback knows that. In the Dahlback catalogue, you'll find a plethora of goodies from headers to pistons to turbos and suspension. (You'll also find some cool footage of the Golf doing what it does best under the Media link at www.audituning.com.) In fact, while I was at Dahlback's facility I spied what looked like a 1.8T motor on an engine stand with a double-disc Sachs clutch. A few questions later, I was informed that this motor is being built for TJM, the clutch on it was indeed a double disc that you can buy from TJM or Dahlback that fits the 1.8T with no modifications, and that once this motor is together, it should produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 hp. I guess it's good to be the official U.S. distributor of Dahlback Racing.
Being the nosy bastard that I am, I starting climbing the walls at Dahlback's shop to see what else I could find. Among the many jewels I could see were big brakes, blow-off valves, cams for nearly any motor you can think of, intake manifolds for 1.8Ts and other motors, lightweight flywheels, and KW coilovers that Dahlback has tweaked the valving and spring rates on.
It wasn't just the products that were interesting, either. At the entrance of Dahlback Racing there is an '84 Audi Sport quattro that has never seen the rally circuit. The car, though not complete yet, is being built by Dahlback as one of his many projects. In Dahlback's office I found a table that contains a 700-hp Audi race motor, and then I happened to stumble upon two other motors next to the beverage machine--a 360-hp 1.8T motor and a 250-hp 2.1L I-5, both of which are for sale.
When I was flying to Sweden, I thought TJM had been overstating what Dahlback Racing produces. The guys at TJM had claimed Hans Dahlback was a mastermind, an automotive savant, a person with so much engineering knowledge that it could be hazardous to his health. Now that I've seen the videos of the Golf, talked to Dahlback himself, and seen his record-setting '55 Beetle and his tubbed V-8 Chevy Astro sporting 22-inch-wide cheater slicks, I have come to think that what TJM was saying was right all along. No man should be able to tell stories about holding the windshield of a car with one hand at over 200 mph while steering with the other and still live to be more than 30, but sure enough, Dahlback is still kicking. He has more stories than anyone should have, and the more you know, the more you want to tell him it's amazing he's still alive.