Several months ago we began In The Garage (see p24); a regular look at interesting projects under construction. At the time, we knew there were a number of cars under construction for SEMA and wanted you to get a first glimpse of what you could expect in the near future.
Of the cars included in the first installment there were two Mk5 GTIs. At the time, the only similarities were the base vehicle and final destination. But as it turns out, they had far more in common than we realized.
When we walked through the doors at SEMA '06 and saw the finished machinery for the first time, it became obvious we'd witnessed the construction of two significant cars. Both were crossover hits from two companies normally associated with the import scene, both were widebody, both were carbon covered, had big brakes and wore cross-spoke wheels. And what's more, both were persuaded to allow us exclusive access to the cars after the show.
You can read Sam's report on the Extreme Dimensions GTI on p36 but in order to find out more about this Tein creation we spoke again to Philip Chase, the Sales and Marketing Manager at Tein USA.
For those who don't know, Tein is a Japanese suspension specialist with divisions in the USA and UK. The American arm regularly builds cars to showcase its products, but this is its first foray into the European market. Why? "Our company has been producing parts for European cars for the past two years and we're hoping this GTI will get our name out there," Philip explained. "When we were planning for SEMA '06 the GTI was brand new and within our price range, so we opted to build one.
"Most Tein project cars are white and we purchased a car in April from a dealer - we didn't get any special discounts from VW. The car only had 130 delivery miles on the clock when we started to disassemble it. We wanted to finish the car early for once, but that didn't work out.
"Normally Tein is conservative with engine work, but with the GTI we felt power mods would make more of a statement since most Euro owners don't do this,"
Work began with the Tein crew stripping the interior and removing the motor. "We scraped all the sound-deadening from the bodyshell and took out 20 lb of tar in the process. That's when we discovered VW engineers use Torx screws to build the cars, so had to buy new Snap-On tools," Philip revealed.
The motor was also stripped and the long block delivered to EuroCode Tuning (EC) in Torrance, CA. "They're one of our dealers and are located close-by. They were also very enthusiastic to participate in the project, so it worked out well," Philip said.