I've been privileged enough to drive one of only three Golf A59's ever built...with genuine A59 body parts. Okay, it was not a REAL A59, in fact it was far from the real deal, but I'd be lying if I wasn't completely beside myself at the time. So what's the story on the 3rd A59 body kit? Read on dear friends and I shall explain.
Back in the early 2000's, around 2003 or so, was when I first heard of an A59 existing outside of Germany. The fact that it was inside of North America was really mind blowing, and when my boss bought the car and it showed up on a trailer completely covered in dirt and road salt, my mind was even more blown. How in the world did it end up here?
The car was built buy Cris Lee, who lives in B.C. Canada, and who was first made aware of the kit around 2000 through some connections at Momentum Motorsport. It was located just across the border in Oregon State, where a well connected shop owner had purchased the kit, complete with hood, dash, fenders, bumpers, rear quarter panels and rear spoiler for a rather pricey 15,000 euros direct from SMS. In today's exchange rate that's over $20,000. not cheap. Cris got the entire set up for "next to nothing" as he put it, but proceeded to spend nearly as much in body work to install it onto his Jazz Blue 1997 Driver's Edition GTI VR6.
Having inspected this body work first hand, I can tell you that it is TOP NOTCH. As solid, actually more solid, than any Mk3 you'll ever see. I almost destroyed this car one time. Did I not mention that? I was in the NGP Rallye Golf VR6 Turbo which had, to say the least, a twitchy clutch, and I was attempting to move from a rather tight parking spot on a slight incline. The A59 was in front, sideways, and I stalled, just barely managing to grab the brakes about 6" from absolute destruction. This was also before a show, so it would have been doubly bad. But it didn't happen, so back to the story.
Notice how tiny a normal set of wheels look with the A59 body kit. Large rollers only.
The hood, rear spoiler and dash were all sold before Cris came into the picture, and are rumored to still be living inside the USA somewhere. So if you ever happen to find someone selling a complete carbon fiber dash for a Mk3, you may have stumbled upon a serious piece of VW Motorsport history. Anyways, this was in fact the last kit from the program, and it is unknown if there are any other spares, but it's pretty unlikely. The reason the install was so involved was because this was 100% just panels. No mounting points, no anything. It was as Cris said, just the molded panels that someone had to play around with.
So after a short time as a demo car for FK Automotive, Cris decided he wasn't doing enough with the A59 and let it go. Once it was at NGP Racing it was changed just a bit, with a custom turbo kit installed making around 375hp, some Kinesis wheels, different seats, but visually it remained exactly as it was when Cris first built the car.
Dave sold the A59 to a local customer in late 2005 / early 2006, and that owner just recently re-sold the car once again. Who owns it? Not sure. Will it ever see the light of day again? Let's hope so. End up crashed? Well let's hope not, but another one of a kind (the infamous Zonker, which I will also write about fairly soon) has been rolling around for a number of years, and well, it's been doing okay.
Check out the carbon fiber weave, visible through the paint. Is this the last A59 kit? Probably, and although the molds still exist, the cost to try and get SMS to create another set would likely be astronomical. I'm not sure anyone in their right mind would spend $30,000 for an incomplete body kit.
And that's that. Or is it? The cool thing about the A59 is that it has managed to live what seems like nine lives, considering that it was never even a production vehicle. The next and final installment involves the power plant from the dear A59, which managed far more success than VW has ever managed at a high level of motorsport. Where? France. If you don't know then I'll tell you in a couple weeks. Stand by!_WRS
I don't think you ever told me that you almost crashed this into the Rallye...that would have been pretty unfortunate!
ReplyDeleteYou need to do a companion piece on the Rallye, still the fastest car I've ever been in (maybe thats actually a toss up with the AWE 700hp 997 Turbo... but thats yet another story).
It's kind of unfortunate that both those cars were sold off... it takes so much effort to build this sort of car, and everyone in the 'shop demo car' world seems like they are always in such a hurry to get rid of things. I understand that the money needs to fund the next project, but damn these things would be awesome to rock in 5+ years...and both of these were pretty special.
Actually I was in the Rallye and this was parked like 2' in front of it. I basically thought "oh I can make it, just back up and 3-point turn out of the spot" but yeah. Stalled and came real close to hitting the car dead on the rear wheel area. I moved it then....it would have been a real problem.
ReplyDeleteI agree about everything being sold off though. I have a few ideas about why it always happens, but the main thing is that whoever gets the car almost always drives it into the ground and it's no good from that point on. I think having them all in the shop's possession, even if they aren't registered, would be really cool. Sort of like a little museum of sorts. Of course they should also be driven so it's a bit of catch 22.