Innehållsförteckning för April 2024 från Performance VW

Looking at this month’s cover, I started to compare Frank Wolkers’s super-light Mk1 (p8) - running ‘just’ 206bhp - with Tim Dunn’s all-wheel-drive Mk2 - that boasts over 500bhp - and asked myself which would be the most fun to drive. Then I started to think about which of the four vehicles on cover I would most like to own. Stupid question really, and one I’m probably still trying to answer now. Steve Fraser’s V10 R8 (p34) has got to be the ultimate head turner, but for some reason I’m more drawn to Rich Morgan’s tubbed Panel Van (p60). I just love a sleeper. Hell, I think I’m going to have to leave the final decision to you guys. Elsewhere in the issue, we’ve produced a Mk2 Golf Buying Guide…

Some of you may well recognise thirty-one-year-old Steve Fraser from his S30BMX YouTube channel and social media presence. His ever-growing army of followers is well deserved as he somehow manages to put out regular good quality material for his own channel and that of his sponsors as an automotive content creator whilst still working full-time as a British Gas engineer. Don’t do socials but still recognise him from somewhere? His old Mk6 Golf GTI was featured in these hallowed pages twice. You guessed it, it changed so much that a further article was felt fitting to showcase its development back in January 2015. At the time, the South East London-born then twenty-two-year-old was living in Kent but has now made the move north of the border and resides just outside…

Will the youth of today ever really learn to delay gratification? You know, the rapidly disappearing art of putting off the stuff you want to do until you’ve done the things you need to do. It’s an essential skill if you want to live a successful, fulfilled life, one that’s guided by self-discipline rather than impulse. I’ll admit I didn’t learn this until a few years ago, but some people seem to have it in them from birth. ‘If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail’ is one of those statements people regularly post on Instagram memes, but it makes a lot of sense. The trouble for car-crazy people these days, though, is that there’s always another car popping up on social media that entices us away from the…

I had owned a Jetta Mk2 since 1992 – a 1.8-litre GL automatic on a D-plate. Preferring the booted ‘Golf’, in late 1998 I went looking for the GTI version to add to my fleet. I bought F930 CAV from an advert seen in the local Auto Freeway paper. Advertised at £2250, I haggled them down to £2050. The mileage wasn’t listed, but I did ask when on a telephone call with the seller and was told it was at 110,000. A service history stamped book was available with seven stamps, showing that this GTI had worked hard since day one – it had already completed 25,015 miles by the first service after 15 months, even though annual or 10,000-mile servicing is a VW recommendation. I bought the Jetta on…

Amazingly, the first VW Tuning Show was held way back in 2003 and looking back through some of the photos from that maiden event, well, it’s safe to say things have certainly come on since then when it comes to styling. Twenty years on, last year’s event could have easily been mistaken for any one of the top Europe events such was the quality of metal on show. Held between the 9th and 11th of June, thankfully the weather was glorious for most of the weekend which certainly will have helped the attendance figures reaching an all-time high. The familiar location, situated next to the lake in Karlovac, near the capital of Zagreb, thankfully has plenty of room to accommodate the expansion of cars and people. As always, there is…

A sub-700 kilogram Mk1? Hot take: the welded in multi-point cage isn’t making this look easy, and the panels don’t look like wafer-thin fibreglass. Good luck with that. Usually very early bodyshells lend themselves to the featherweight game - or savagely gutted ones - or someone talking the talk! But not this one, as it turns out. Netherlands-based Frank Wolkers was serious from the very start. In September 2008 an unsuspecting - and complete - Inari Silver small light 1980, believed rust-free 1272cc three-door runner went on the weigh bridge at 770kg, and then straight into disassembly. Call the cage + 50 kg. The challenge then was to net throw out 120+ kgs out to hit the target. Could be interesting. Let’s do the ‘math’… Influenced by a friend with…

For those of you who’ve not come across the Dudley-based conversion company, Starlight Campers has now grown to become one of the largest in the area, producing around 50 vans a year from their spacious and well-equipped premises. It all began a dozen or so years back when Mark Cherrington decided to combine his experience in mechanical engineering with his dad, Dave’s cabinet making background. “I was a keen petrolhead anyway and with my dad’s carpentry skills, together we decided to produce bespoke campervans, “Mark explains, “I’d worked as an engineer for 10 years and my dad had been a cabinet maker for 40 years, so we had built up plenty of experience between us.” Beginning with Mark building bespoke cabinets alongside his dad, the step up to offering full…

The Mk2 Golf GTI had some pretty big shoes to fill when it was launched back in 1983. While it was slightly larger and heavier than the Mk1 GTI it replaced, thankfully, it still offered the same magic mix of fun and practicality that made the original Hot Hatch such a smash hit. While it may also have been a financial success for Volkswagen, for a long time the Mk2 GTI didn’t hold quite the same kudos as the Mk1 - perhaps because it simply wasn’t the ‘original’ or it hadn’t been ‘styled by Giugiaro’. Some might argue, however, that it was actually the better car… It’s quite astonishing to think that, even today, you’ll still occasionally see Mk2 Golf GTIs being daily driven - especially when you consider early…

There are many reasons why we bought a VW Jetta GTI 16v for our next Classics World project, but the main one is that I just love them. And I love this particular car. Starting with the practical reasons why we bought it, having teamed up with our friends at Machine Mart, we were keen to find a car that had relevance to our wider audience. A VW of some kind would have scope with our colleagues over in Performance VW magazine, but only if it was a bit sporty. So that instantly meant going for a GTI, most probably a Golf. There would have been other options from the Wolfsburg stable, such as a Polo G40, a Scirocco or maybe a Corrado, but they tend to be rarer and…

FROM £599 "Get more than a peak power figure - it’s all about the drive.” Well, the latest press release from Revo announcing its new software for the Mk8 Golf R pretty much spells it out. Revo’s focus isn’t just about chasing numbers and pub talk, in many ways how the car performs out on the open road is even more important to them. The Revo tuning philosophy ensures that impressive performance benefits are balanced with usable, reliable power delivery that enhances the way your vehicle drives. The latest Golf Mk8R tuning program is made up of Stage 1 Software, Stage 2 Software and a Revo Performance Pack which utilises Revo’s premium hardware. Revo’s performance software is ‘feature-rich’, including Innovative Steering Wheel Switching, Stop/Start Memory Mode, Enhanced Exhaust Overrun, Temperature…

MARCH 10th ULTIMATE DUBS Telford International Centre ultimate-dubs.co.uk 16-17th VOLKSWORLD PLUS Sandown Park, Esher, Surrey volksworldshow.com 29-31st FESTIVAL OF POWER Santa Pod Raceway santapod.co.uk APRIL 6-7th DUBSHED Eikon Centre, Lisburn, NI GTINI.com 12-13th WOOKIES IN THE WOODS Fontana Dam, NC, USA wookiesinthewoods.com 13-14th APRIL GR8 CAR SHOW Kortrijk Xpo, Belgium gr8mag.be 14th AUTO CULTURE ’24 Doncaster Racecourse FB: Elsecar at the Races 21st GTI SPRING FEST 2024 Santa Pod Raceway santapod.co.uk 21st SUNDAY SCRAMBLE Bicester Heritage bicesterheritage.co.uk 21st DROPPED Heusden Zodler, Belgium dropped.be 28th DUSTOFF Thompson Speedway, CT, USA nedustoff.com 28th LAY LOW 11 Kortrijk, Belgium FB: Lay Low MAY 5th BHP SHOW Kent Event Centre, Maidstone bhpshows.com 5th EUROBUILT SHOW & SHINE Greenfield, MA, USA eurobuiltvt.com 5th EUROS AT THE CREEK Maryland International Raceway, USA deutschwurx.business.site 10-12th VANWEST Taunton…