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So I bought this car when in 2005 when I was 16 - it was my first car.
It's one of 13 New Zealand new VW Corrados (all were 16v), and now one of 10 left on the road here. It is finished in a factory option Helios Blue Metallic (LA5Y), which has a sweet violet pearl in the sunlight.
At first I ***** it and thought it was the most ugly thing I'd ever seen, but then it grew on me.
This is how it looked when I bought it, with 183,000kms on the clock. It stayed like this for a few years while I worked in a pizza shop saving zero dollars. (Pic is really small because I have no old ones!)
A few years later I bought another of the NZ New Corrados. The intention was to take the bilsteins & -40mm jamex springs out, along with every other good bit I could find.
Next up was a FK badgless grill that I bought on the-corrado.net.
Then long nothing. It cost me enough just keeping the car tidy and maintained with genuine parts. Until came the idea of BBS RS. I bought my first set in the hope that they'd fit, not knowing a thing about stud patterns, widths, offsets, adaptors, redrilling etc. They didn't fit and couldn't fit. This sent me on a downward spiral of whoreism. I became probably the country's worst BBS RS whore, buying every set that I could sniff out of the woodwork. I even bought cars just for the RS that were on them!
I went through so many sets of wheels, buying & selling to make a buck to fund more bits for the Corrado. But as I learnt about what was what, I didn't want to settle for anything less than a 16" 4x100 RS - the rs003. It took me three years, but I finally found a set in NZ and snapped them up before anyone else had seen them.
Imported a bunch of bits for some friends and I from Germany
And did a bit of a refurb on them. They went to 16x7.5 and 16x8.0. At the time I thought that'd get them sitting flush, but I was wrong. I was also broke, so it had to do for the time being.
Some more 17" RS that I found for $300, probably around USD$150 at the time!
This is how the car was sitting on the same -40mm jamex springs, but we had then chopped a couple of coils out to get it sitting lower. It drove like shit.
Then I found a '76 pre facelift mk1 scirocco - probably even more rare than the Corrado in New Zealand. It needed a full resto, but I had to have it to match the rado. Like brothers, they sat side by side for a while.
I then moved to a flat with a MASSIVE garage because I didn't have enough room for both cars & work space.
Then I found this BMW with another set of rs003s on it! He didn't know what they were, and I bought the whole car for $1200. I took the wheels off the car and sold the car for a profit
These wheels were to become the newly refurbed, wider, better 003s that I'd put on the Corrado. I used the rear lips off the other set and put them on the front. I got some new 2.5" lips for the rears, new black/chrome 3D badges, new chrome bolts, new 1/4 height caps. The final spec was 16x8 et12, 16x8.5 et6. I ran them on 195/45 Kumho tyres, which is the smallest 16" size you can get in NZ.
The front wasn't stretched enough, so I imported a pair of 195/40/16 Toyo T1Rs from Holland, they cost around $400 each. I also had bought some cheap (sh*t) V-Maxx coilovers by this time and wound them right down, but they weren't low enough.
Just a few of the sets I had at the time
Here's a little trophy I built for a show that we started called Stance Off (www.facebook.com/stanceoff)
I then polished up the original 1" lips for the other set I had and sold them to a nice guy in Luxembourg with an E30 cabriolet.
Then I found a little mk1 golf which had not been registered or warranted for 10 years and had sat in a field on Waiheke Island. It was totally illegal to drive it on the road, but I thought it'd be a bit of fun. Over the weekend, I transformed it into the "RatPig mk1". The pig part being the police theme
I took the springs out of this thing, but it still wasn't low enough. So we chopped the bottom off the shock housing, dropped the inserts about 30mm lower (through the bottom of the shock), and welded the insert in place. The shocks were fucked anyway so it didn't matter.
Anyway, by that time, there was one little thing on each panel of the car that pissed me off, so I went balls deep and had a full respray in the original colour. At the same time, I had all the guards hammered dead flat, removed the rub strips from the doors & smoothed the front bumper.
Still unhappy with the ride height, I bought some new FK Konigsports from Venom in the UK. They are height & damper adjustable, and they go lower than the V-Shits do. Nice.
Oh, forgot to say I had a 24v VR6 motor and VR6 O2A box lying around that was meant to be for the mk1 rocco. But I was bored of the 1.8 16v so decided to whack it into my Corrado instead.
This meant I needed a facelift bonnet, in a country located at the asshole of the world, with 10 nz new corrados (all with the early bonnets) and about two imported cars with the facelift bonnet. Shit. Even Germany wouldn't supply me with one after they had quoted me $2,000 to get one. I was running out of options, but luckily I keep tabs on all the other Corrados in the country, and had remembered meeting a nice guy with a facelift 2.0L 16v. I had stayed in touch with him for years, always wanting to buy the car, but he didn't want to sell it. I thought i'd flick him a text and ask if he wanted to sell me the bonnet. 'Nope, but i'll sell you the car'. That night, I bought the whole car... just for the bonnet.
I swapped bonnets, and a couple of other little bits, and sold the car three days later to a young dude in Hamilton.
This was the car. For those who don't know - the facelift bonnet has a lump in the middle as you can see, which allows an extra 2" of clearance required for a VR6 swap.
Motor in, bonnet on, things were underway.
I had sent the ECU away to a guy in the Isle of Man to get remapped & deimmobilised. When we got it back and plugged it in, it wasn't deimmobilised
Turns out he had never done one to the point where the car was still running corrado clocks & key. So 13 days out from the SO2013 (Stance Off show) that I was organising, I thought I was f*cked.
Stealth Racing to the rescue! Within 6.5 days, I had expressed the ECU over to them, had the immo removed, tested, and expressed back to me. I try to forget that I spent $400 just posting an ECU around the world!
But I got it back in time for the show and the car was all go. The radiator came in from ECS in the states, and left us no room to mount the fans on the engine side. So we whacked two big 12" and 10" fans on the front side of the rad. These things blow way harder than any girl I've ever come across!
The motor is 204hp standard out of a V6 4motion mk4 Jetta with 77,000kms on the clock. It's now running a remapped ECU, BMC air filter, new Sachs clutch kit, Powerflex nolothane bushes all round, mk3 subframes, 2.5" catback exhaust & solid front engine mount. I haven't had a chance to dyno it yet but I imagine it'll be somewhere around 220 - 230hp.
I got the exhaust done, 2.5" cat back with one resonator & a small back box. It sounds awesome, doesn't drone at motorway speeds and is nice and quiet, but when you put your foot down you hear it alright...
Then I found an oldschool NOS wooden BBS steering wheel, rare as a rare thing. I got it for $50 too! Put that on (excuse the filthy interior and missing dash bits in this pic)
I also gathered together a full set of original half height centre caps for the wheels - quite hard to find. I had them polished and whacked some new badges in to freshen the wheels up. They look 10x better than the aftermarket ones!
I had the car ready for the show and that's how it sits now.
I'm pretty stoked on the car now, all it needs is a full beige leather interior and maybe a turbo in the future. The interior will have to wait because i'll have to go to the UK and buy a car and send it home for that, haven't quite got $10k for that exercise yet!
Anyway, if you're interested, here is a write up of our show on the hellaflush website:
Be sure to check us out and like us on facebook too:
I'm also still pissing all my money into the wind on wheels, here's another set of RMs that I'm nearly done. I'm about to try and buy another mk1 scirocco also as a daily driver so will put these on that!
It's one of 13 New Zealand new VW Corrados (all were 16v), and now one of 10 left on the road here. It is finished in a factory option Helios Blue Metallic (LA5Y), which has a sweet violet pearl in the sunlight.
At first I ***** it and thought it was the most ugly thing I'd ever seen, but then it grew on me.
This is how it looked when I bought it, with 183,000kms on the clock. It stayed like this for a few years while I worked in a pizza shop saving zero dollars. (Pic is really small because I have no old ones!)
A few years later I bought another of the NZ New Corrados. The intention was to take the bilsteins & -40mm jamex springs out, along with every other good bit I could find.
Next up was a FK badgless grill that I bought on the-corrado.net.
Then long nothing. It cost me enough just keeping the car tidy and maintained with genuine parts. Until came the idea of BBS RS. I bought my first set in the hope that they'd fit, not knowing a thing about stud patterns, widths, offsets, adaptors, redrilling etc. They didn't fit and couldn't fit. This sent me on a downward spiral of whoreism. I became probably the country's worst BBS RS whore, buying every set that I could sniff out of the woodwork. I even bought cars just for the RS that were on them!
I went through so many sets of wheels, buying & selling to make a buck to fund more bits for the Corrado. But as I learnt about what was what, I didn't want to settle for anything less than a 16" 4x100 RS - the rs003. It took me three years, but I finally found a set in NZ and snapped them up before anyone else had seen them.
Imported a bunch of bits for some friends and I from Germany
And did a bit of a refurb on them. They went to 16x7.5 and 16x8.0. At the time I thought that'd get them sitting flush, but I was wrong. I was also broke, so it had to do for the time being.
Some more 17" RS that I found for $300, probably around USD$150 at the time!
This is how the car was sitting on the same -40mm jamex springs, but we had then chopped a couple of coils out to get it sitting lower. It drove like shit.
Then I found a '76 pre facelift mk1 scirocco - probably even more rare than the Corrado in New Zealand. It needed a full resto, but I had to have it to match the rado. Like brothers, they sat side by side for a while.
I then moved to a flat with a MASSIVE garage because I didn't have enough room for both cars & work space.
Then I found this BMW with another set of rs003s on it! He didn't know what they were, and I bought the whole car for $1200. I took the wheels off the car and sold the car for a profit
These wheels were to become the newly refurbed, wider, better 003s that I'd put on the Corrado. I used the rear lips off the other set and put them on the front. I got some new 2.5" lips for the rears, new black/chrome 3D badges, new chrome bolts, new 1/4 height caps. The final spec was 16x8 et12, 16x8.5 et6. I ran them on 195/45 Kumho tyres, which is the smallest 16" size you can get in NZ.
The front wasn't stretched enough, so I imported a pair of 195/40/16 Toyo T1Rs from Holland, they cost around $400 each. I also had bought some cheap (sh*t) V-Maxx coilovers by this time and wound them right down, but they weren't low enough.
Just a few of the sets I had at the time
Here's a little trophy I built for a show that we started called Stance Off (www.facebook.com/stanceoff)
I then polished up the original 1" lips for the other set I had and sold them to a nice guy in Luxembourg with an E30 cabriolet.
Then I found a little mk1 golf which had not been registered or warranted for 10 years and had sat in a field on Waiheke Island. It was totally illegal to drive it on the road, but I thought it'd be a bit of fun. Over the weekend, I transformed it into the "RatPig mk1". The pig part being the police theme
I took the springs out of this thing, but it still wasn't low enough. So we chopped the bottom off the shock housing, dropped the inserts about 30mm lower (through the bottom of the shock), and welded the insert in place. The shocks were fucked anyway so it didn't matter. Anyway, by that time, there was one little thing on each panel of the car that pissed me off, so I went balls deep and had a full respray in the original colour. At the same time, I had all the guards hammered dead flat, removed the rub strips from the doors & smoothed the front bumper.
Still unhappy with the ride height, I bought some new FK Konigsports from Venom in the UK. They are height & damper adjustable, and they go lower than the V-Shits do. Nice.
Oh, forgot to say I had a 24v VR6 motor and VR6 O2A box lying around that was meant to be for the mk1 rocco. But I was bored of the 1.8 16v so decided to whack it into my Corrado instead.
This meant I needed a facelift bonnet, in a country located at the asshole of the world, with 10 nz new corrados (all with the early bonnets) and about two imported cars with the facelift bonnet. Shit. Even Germany wouldn't supply me with one after they had quoted me $2,000 to get one. I was running out of options, but luckily I keep tabs on all the other Corrados in the country, and had remembered meeting a nice guy with a facelift 2.0L 16v. I had stayed in touch with him for years, always wanting to buy the car, but he didn't want to sell it. I thought i'd flick him a text and ask if he wanted to sell me the bonnet. 'Nope, but i'll sell you the car'. That night, I bought the whole car... just for the bonnet.
I swapped bonnets, and a couple of other little bits, and sold the car three days later to a young dude in Hamilton.
This was the car. For those who don't know - the facelift bonnet has a lump in the middle as you can see, which allows an extra 2" of clearance required for a VR6 swap.
Motor in, bonnet on, things were underway.
I had sent the ECU away to a guy in the Isle of Man to get remapped & deimmobilised. When we got it back and plugged it in, it wasn't deimmobilised
Turns out he had never done one to the point where the car was still running corrado clocks & key. So 13 days out from the SO2013 (Stance Off show) that I was organising, I thought I was f*cked.Stealth Racing to the rescue! Within 6.5 days, I had expressed the ECU over to them, had the immo removed, tested, and expressed back to me. I try to forget that I spent $400 just posting an ECU around the world!
But I got it back in time for the show and the car was all go. The radiator came in from ECS in the states, and left us no room to mount the fans on the engine side. So we whacked two big 12" and 10" fans on the front side of the rad. These things blow way harder than any girl I've ever come across!
The motor is 204hp standard out of a V6 4motion mk4 Jetta with 77,000kms on the clock. It's now running a remapped ECU, BMC air filter, new Sachs clutch kit, Powerflex nolothane bushes all round, mk3 subframes, 2.5" catback exhaust & solid front engine mount. I haven't had a chance to dyno it yet but I imagine it'll be somewhere around 220 - 230hp.
I got the exhaust done, 2.5" cat back with one resonator & a small back box. It sounds awesome, doesn't drone at motorway speeds and is nice and quiet, but when you put your foot down you hear it alright...
Then I found an oldschool NOS wooden BBS steering wheel, rare as a rare thing. I got it for $50 too! Put that on (excuse the filthy interior and missing dash bits in this pic)
I also gathered together a full set of original half height centre caps for the wheels - quite hard to find. I had them polished and whacked some new badges in to freshen the wheels up. They look 10x better than the aftermarket ones!
I had the car ready for the show and that's how it sits now.
I'm pretty stoked on the car now, all it needs is a full beige leather interior and maybe a turbo in the future. The interior will have to wait because i'll have to go to the UK and buy a car and send it home for that, haven't quite got $10k for that exercise yet!
Anyway, if you're interested, here is a write up of our show on the hellaflush website:
Be sure to check us out and like us on facebook too:
I'm also still pissing all my money into the wind on wheels, here's another set of RMs that I'm nearly done. I'm about to try and buy another mk1 scirocco also as a daily driver so will put these on that!
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