Performance VW September 2021

We seem to be doing a lot of reminiscing at the moment, but with our 25th anniversary issue dropping next month (turn to page 98 to see what we have in store for you), I guess that’s acceptable, right? Seeing Bruce Morehouse’s Mk3 on cover this month brought back great memories of the first Dubsport car we featured back in June 1998. Ian Birch’s twinengined lime-green Mk1 dominated the cover (who could forget the South Park-themed issue?) with its twin 16v nitrous-injected engines producing over 400bhp. That was pretty impressive stuff at the time, but when you consider just one of the VR6Ts in Bruce’s car boasts almost three-times that power output, then you’ll appreciate how far things have come and what an absolute animal this Mk3 is. What we…

Rebellion is a refusal for the obedience of order. Why settle for the accepted norm when you can choose something others won’t abide by? As Alex Freeland once famously penned, “We Want Your Soul.” While the war for our minds and surveillance capitalism monitors our every consumer action, there’s still space to express ourselves through automotive culture and make choices that are truly independent of ‘the system’. There’s no need to buy the latest model, the newest version or the latest release because car culture has always, and will always, revere the retro, celebrate the creative and eulogise the unconventional with a flair for spannering, welding and painting. Take Aaron Hews for example, he ain’t no sheep and he definitely hasn’t followed the flock with his 9N3 GTi. Aside from the…

You may already know this, you may not, but earlier this year air suspension gurus Air Lift Performance snapped up air tank manufacturer FLO Airride. Why is this important? Well, because it now means the stunningly crafted FLO Airride machined billet air tanks that adorn many a cool-as-fuck truck builds Stateside are now finally available in Europe… and in most cases straight off the shelf. FLO Airride, founded in 2016 by Mike Alexander and Tim Dunaway, has a reputation for excellence within the lowered truck market, specialising in quality air tanks specifically for users of air suspension. Under the move, former FLO Airride-owner Mike Alexander has also moved over to Air Lift Performance as the Group Brand Manager. He shared with us: “I’m very excited to take the FLO brand to…

VANTASTIC Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles have now officially launched new styling packs for the T6.1. The Sport20 styling packs, available in 12 different specifications on both SWB and LWB versions of the Transporter, include combinations of front and rear bodywork accessories, and a range of alloy wheel options. The entry-level T-Sport20 pack, priced at just over £1,400, includes an ABT front lower spoiler, rear spoiler, matt black side bars, and roof rails. The headline specification, priced at £2,188, includes an ABT front lower spoiler, rear spoiler, side bars, roof rails, 20” matt black alloy wheels and offers-30mm lowering. The accessory kits are available in 14 different colours to match the T6.1 options: from Ascot Grey to Starlight Blue, and Bay Leaf Green to Fortana Red. The T-Sport20 styling packs can also be added to…

The world has changed, and there’s no turning back. Whereas mankind was once satisfied to have progress drip-fed like a hamster’s water bottle, we now need to have everything, immediately, all at once. Look at how television has evolved thanks to streaming technology: back in the nineties, if there was a series we wanted to watch on one of the five channels we had access to, we’d settle in for a half-hour episode at a set time one evening, then wait a week for the next episode. (And if the phone rang, you’d miss it.) Today? The whole thing’s available to binge in one go. And when your favourite band released a new single, it might have appeared on two CDs, a cassette and a 7”, each with different B-sides,…

Park your nostalgia for a moment and consider this; the 2020s might just be the golden era for performance tuning. Stood on the shoulders of a century of automotive R&D, we’re living in an age where genuinely fast cars are as accessible as they are diverse - from supercar-baiting modern hot hatches to engine-swapped classics and with every shade of grey in between. Just when you think you’ve seen the limits, along comes something to shake your expectations at their foundation. The headline stats behind Bruce Morehouse’s GTI could almost be mistaken for a typo; 12 cylinders, two huge turbochargers, 2,100 horsepower and (quite likely, by the time you read this) at least one world record too. Performance which would have been unachievable a decade ago, and unimaginable when the seed…