2001 Volkswagen Beetle TDI - Slings And Arrows

2001 VW Beetle TDI
According to chaos theory, small changes within a given system can lead to unexpected, radical results. The famous example is the butterfly in one part of the world flapping its wings, causing weather aberrations on the other side of the world. You get the idea...

That's sort of what happened to Chris Fierek. If the trans hadn't gone kaput on his '01 Beetle TDI 1.9, he may never have suffered the turmoil of getting his car ready for last year's SEMA Show in Las Vegas.

Most people would simply fix the problem and move on. However, Chris had other ideas. With SEMA only four months away, and good friends from motormusicmag partnering a booth with MERA, he was assured of space in the event. So he convinced himself it would make sense to gut the car and build something to display!

Now for the fun part, deciding what to do. Fierek had a Caractere kit on the car for years but fellow Dubber, Sean Cahill, made a simple suggestion: how about acquiring a Beetle RSi body kit.

It's the simple suggestions you have to be wary of, as Fierek later learned. Or as he says, "I discovered that Mr Cahill was part of an evil conspiracy to kill me through lack of sleep and an unparalleled level of stress." That's one way to say that getting the RSi kit was a major pain in the arse!

The search began with VW Motorsport in Germany. They had the 12-piece widebody kits available, but it was absurdly expensive. So Fierek dug further and found an importer on the East Coast with a kit from Europe, but they were looking for a cool $5K.

With a limited build budget and having started on his arduous journey, our hero kept searching. Ultimately he triumphed, finding an individual who managed the Beetle Cup series in Europe in 2000-01. Talk about digging!

The new source had about half-a-dozen complete kits in a storage unit in England. Of course, the reason it was possible to buy this kit was because Fierek had a contact in the UK who could inspect everything for him. But even then it was difficult, what with the kit being in England and the seller being in Ireland taking care of his Dad. But that's another story... After some rather hasty deal-making, commitments made for SEMA and time ticking, the kit was finally en route to the States... where it was promptly held up in customs!

By the time it was released, there were only two weeks to the big show. And it still had to travel by rail to the West Coast. Eventually arriving only days before the event with a broken spoiler.

Fierek and his build team took advantage of the additional downtime and redefined the use of Dynamat in the vehicle, using Xtreme, Dynaliner and Dynapad to cover every square inch. Since the engine and transmission were out, it was an opportune time to do the suspension as well. So Eibach coilovers were installed, plus sway bars.

After spending three weeks researching trans options, Fierek kept running into the same answer: IPT is your go-to source for a performance transmission that will keep up with all the motor mods. So he went over to RLH Industries and pulled the transmission, shipping it to IPT and called his friends at KermaTDI for the turbo, injectors, custom software and intake that would unleash more torque from his 1.9 liter TDI motor.