2001 Volkswagen Beetle TDI - Slings And Arrows

Thanks to the efforts of Fox Marketing and BASF, the stars aligned. The Saturday prior to the show, Fox arranged for a BASF shop in LA to supply the Audi Nimbus grey pearl paint. Fierek drove 150 miles to the custom shop to deliver it and with less than a week to go, the car went from stock Cyber green to the luxurious Nimbus grey that you see here.

The following day the team installed the KermaTDI stage 3 parts and IPT trans. Everything but the intercooler piping fitted. "Not even close!" Fierek said, as calmly as he could muster.

With four days left, no sleep, working his regular gig during the day and cranking on the car at night, Fierek needed a quick solution for the intercooler. He was talking to his father-in-law when suddenly they had an idea. "How about 2'' copper pipe?" It would be pricey, but who cared at that point! It was Wednesday, three days left to the show and copper would do fine.

With the body kit in their possession, the team at Slivnik Machine pulled an all-nighter dry-fitting the parts. Then, as he was standing in a shop with performance and styling parts puked everywhere, all the people who had offered to help flaked on Fierek, except Chad Utt from Epic Motorsports and his father-in-law. So for the next few days they got no sleep.

On the last day, they started with a grey shell, no glass and needing to fabricate brackets to align the kit. The mesh for the front and the rear valances had been delayed in shipping and wouldn't be there until Monday. Yet the guys from RLH arrived at midnight, and Utt with friend Charlie Quong spent the day slamming things together.

The audio system, consisting of an Alpine source unit connected to the Imprint processor for fine-tuning of the sound, plus Morel speakers and subwoofer with Genesis amps, looked spectacular. Utt made beautiful tweeter pods for the A-pillars to match the gauge pods. They also mounted the 6.5'' Morel mids in the doors and a 10'' sub in the spare wheel well - although the spare was retained after they raised the trunk floor 3''. Genesis Dual Mono amps are mounted on either side of the car in the rear quarter panels, replacing the factory rear speakers. One powers the left channel, the other powers the right, while a third in the trunk is for the sub. But the audio wasn't working, no time!

The plan was to leave at 8:00am for Vegas. That's when the brakes locked up and they couldn't get the car on the trailer. Of course, that wasn't the only thing not working. The engine wasn't running either. They had to press on, and were finally able to connect everything on the audio system properly.

By 10:00pm, they were finally on their way to the SEMA show in Vegas with a complete interior, audio working, car not running and paint that - well, it still needed to be worked on for the show.

On Monday, friend Mike Gelb from Matworks, started working on the paint while Thom Voisinet followed behind applying sponsor decals. Fierek decided to test the audio since the car would be used to demo the new Alpine Imprint. But there was a huge power draw on the system, killing the battery.

By this point, the tape he pulled off the mirrors to find one completely broken was the least of his concerns!