In all my life I've never owned a new car. The closest I came was an 18 month-old Focus RS (European 212hp turbo widebody). After joining et I quickly realized the situation was unlikely to change on the beggar's wages they pay us. So I consigned myself to an abused R1 and the bus until we received a phone call from VW of America out of the blue. It seems they had a spare GLI kicking around and wondered if we'd take it off their hands for a year.
This sort of thing regularly happens to the grown-up magazines - European Car has loads and Motor Trend occupies a garage floor with theirs. It allows the adults to drive the car for an extended period so they can report on its abilities over an extended period. Pretty dull stuff.
To be honest, we're usually overlooked for being scruffy and irresponsible. But the man who makes the loan decisions at VWoA must have been off sick because somehow we got on the list!
So before he could leave his sickbed and overrule the decision, we had a United gray GLI delivered to eurotuner Towers. There were strict instructions to return it in similar condition after a year, but we assumed they were joking.We sat in the car for an hour smelling the new leather and fathoming the satelite navigation (can you believe you don't get a free trial period with satellite radio?). Then we rushed up to our penthouse office suite to start ordering parts.
Like all good projects, we started slowly. We were only going to fit a chip, exhaust and maybe some lowering springs. We'd swap the wheels, of course, but nothing that couldn't be easily reversed. So no metal body mods and no air chisels - this wouldn't be the world's first GLI Cabrio!
Our biggest concern was to make it more European. The car looks too similar to a Corolla for anybody's liking and we wanted people to know it's of German origin. This really defined our approach to the entire project and largely affected its outcome.
As previously mentioned, we hoped to achieve this with a minimum of modifications but then we saw the new body kit from Belgian-based tuners, Caractere. After communication with its US importer, Landspeed, we discovered everything was in stock and a large box was tossed in a UPS truck. Oh dear. What would we tell VW? Our plan was to keep quiet and hope nobody noticed. It worked brilliantly until we went and put it on the cover! While awaiting the body kit we made another call to The Torque Factory. They came up with the parts fitted in last month's tech story (et 8/05 p72) - GIAC software, Techtonics downpipe, cat and exhaust, Evolution Motorsport intake and VF-Engineering motor mounts. You can read about the installation and dyno results in that issue, but to recap we got 206hp at the wheels and 248 lb/ft - an increase of 29hp and 57 lb-ft respectively. Not bad for a first try. And you can compare those figures to the second 2.0T zorst, chip and intake test on p54 of this issue.
We then left the GLI with suspension experts, Hotchkis. We wanted the car dropped on the floor with less body roll, and had been told the car needs negative camber when lowered to prevent premature tire wear.
To be honest, the stock GLI handles very well. It's firm without jarring, but sits ridiculously high. Friends needed a ladder to enter the car. It was embarrassing, especially on stock 17" wheels.
As you can see, Hotchkis Sport Suspensiontook all its measurements and developed lower spring that brings it down 1.5". This was a little conservative for our taste but we couldn't fault the results. The ride was significantly better. It gave more of everything but retained very acceptable comfort levels. At the moment, we're awaiting the completion of sway bars and camber plates. These should be available as you read this and we'll have a full installation story in a future issue.
The body kit had arrived and was shipped off to DTM Autohas for painting. These guys have one of the best SoCal paint shops so we knew they'd do a top job.
The quality plastic Caractere kit comprised of a complete replacement front bumper. When ordering you must specify whether your car has headlight washers and foglights. You can choose to have a GTI/GLI-style black center section on the bumper or keep it flush. Either way you lose the ugly chrome grin. You can also choose a grille with or without the VW roundel. We decided to delete the badge, and blanks are supplied to fill the bumper and hood notches.
The skirts are easy - one option, with a sporty vent in the rear. The stock rear bumper remains but fillets are added to either side. These disguise the black plastic that would otherwise show, and give the bumper some depth and shape.
On the rear window we have a spoiler that makes the roofline appear longer and lower to give the car a sportier look. Then there's a choice of trunk spoiler. Sadly, our car came with VW's factory wing. It fits at either end and has a central support. Caractere offers a taller rear wing but it has no central support so we'd have to fill the hole and paint the trunk. Instead we chose the low-level trunk spoiler that sits flush on the deck. It's subtler but we discovered this one didn't cover the hole in the center of the trunk either. However, we chose to simply plug the hole and hope nobody notices. Up to now, nobody has...
We think the kit looks spectacular and will bring you the fitting and painting details in a future issue, probably November...
With such a dramatic transformation we realized wheel choice would be crucial. So we spoke to our friend, Derek Jenkins, VW's chief designer. He suggested the wheels should be very open and large, recommending a bold five-spoke.