Charlotte, NC dad Rodney Huss needed to tune a new daily driver, something “'Euro' with the 'Bad Boy' attitude with a mix of the old school and racecar technology...and the clean, simple styling that makes the German cars stand, out without being flamboyantly tacky."
So he started with a 1992 Passat Wagon beater, $20k, and some hacksaws. The results and the making of are on VW Vortex:
VV: What would you do to the car if money were no object?Yeah, I'd think that giant speaker box kind of cuts into the grocery-getting, but on the bright side, that full-length, retractable ragtop sure boosts the car's ficus tree-getting capacity.A: This goes back to an earlier question. I would build it the ultimate grocery-getter with the ability to surprise most so-called performance cars and still haul the wife and kids out for dinner and a movie.
Auto Biography: 1992 Passat 16v Wagon [vwvortex.com via jalopnik]
First, I love German cars. I have a nice B5 V6 Passat and an '88 535is out in the garage. So it's not that I'm biased against VWs...
It's a stock, 134hp 2.0l 16v (if memory serves from the two 2.0l 16v vw's I had) plus a couple hundred pounds of speakers? $20K? 0-60 in what, like 9 seconds on a good day? Even turbo-charged it's going to handle like a...er...passat with too much power.
$20K buys a clean E28 M5, 4-door E36 M3, or even E34 M5 or early S4/S6, etc and you don't have every honda on the road trying to race you. Mind boggling.
[don't forget the $1400 for the original car, and the achingly low resale value of tuned cars. -ed.]
Yeah, I think it's safe to say ass is the one thing it doesn't haul, but everyone's got to have a hobby, right. $21k invested, make offer.
[yeah, I went for the easy over accurate in the headline. Now I'm embarassed; the engine is "Stock, for now, turbo to come". Sheesh. -ed]
actualy it would probably be safe to say that this car has either a 2.8 or 2.9 vr6 DOHC which can haul some serious ass