Exiting the final turn that makes up the tight succession of corners behind GMP Performance's North Carolina-based shop, I didn't even need to downshift to catch the BMW in front of me. I was a little surprised by this. After all, the BMW that was sitting mere feet from my front bumper was a 328Ci E46-not the lightest of cars, but still a competent performer and worthy adversary of the 1.8T GTI I was piloting. Swinging wide out of the last turn, I poked the nose of the VW just past the tail of the Bimmer, letting the driver know I could take him.
Then I braked. After all, these were public roads, I'd never driven these corners, and it was only 8 p.m. The night was young.
Earlier in the evening, while the sun was out, we'd taken these cars for a test run around the city-accelerating up ramps, gritting our teeth as we hoped the cars would stick like glue around the fast sweepers, and thanking God every time they did. Earlier, I'd been driving the BMW. Earlier, I'd been in the slower of the two cars. Earlier, I'd been trying to hot-dog it around a short sweeper with GMP's Stephen Klitzsch taunting me to go faster.
To the BMW's credit, it wasn't slow; it was simply fighting a well-tuned GTI. The BMW was sporting a plethora of goodies, some of which boasted the prestigious AC Schnitzer logo, so I knew the Bimmer was as capable as it gets. The problem was simply that the GTI, with its 1.8T propulsion and H&R coilovers, out-muscled the BMW exiting, and sometimes even through, the turns. Peg the throttle on the BMW through a tight turn, however, and hold on, because the GMP-tuned Bimmer still packed enough punch to step the rear out and light up the tires-that's always more fun than the power-induced understeer the GTI suffers from.
The GTI has an interesting story behind it, most of which I found highly insignificant as I watched it pull away from me. GMP had convinced Carolina VW, a local VW dealership, to hand over the keys to the GTI while GMP helped develop and promote an accessory program with the dealership. Carolina VW should have known better, though, as GMP has a 27-year history in Volkswagen tuning, and any car that ends up in the hands of the GMP crew is destined to be disassembled and rebuilt with performance in mind.
Sports car or not, that darned GTI, with it's cushy blue Alcantara interior and mismatched RH Alurad and Artec wheels, was pulling away, and I couldn't catch up. Hitting the highway, I continued to watch the little green VW slowly but surely drive into the distance. I suppose, if we had had the guts to continue well into triple digits, I could have powered past it, but we tried to remain somewhat civilized during my open-road evaluation.
Peeking under the hood of the GTI, it becomes obvious why it pulls so hard. GMP installed an APR EMCS four-program chip, which was set on its 93-octane code-I fear how hard the car would pull with the chip toggled to 100-octane. Attached to the intake manifold was a Eurospec twin-intercooler setup, which handled the air fed by the stock turbo through the Neuspeed turbo inlet pipe. Grumbling behind the car was a Supersprint 63mm exhaust. The temperature outside was also dropping, so even if the intercoolers could suffer from heat soak, there were no signs of that happening.
With the GTI rounding a corner I had yet to reach, Stephen clicked on the Panasonic monitor in the BMW and cranked up the volume, putting to use his newly built Encore Car Stereo trunk system, which was composed of an Alpine amp, some Wyoming Burlwood (the same wood that BMW equipped the cabin with), hints of orange neon, and two very large and very loud JL woofers. Stephen was very proud of his BMW, despite the fact that the GTI was blatantly faster.