Introducing: The VW Sport IMSA GTI (Part 1: discovery, research and acquisition)

"Hey, you might want to check your email...Alan sent a link for a GTI listed over on Bring a Trailer. It looks pretty cool." These are the words that I heard from my brother Josh when I answered my phone early one Friday morning; February 4th to be exact. I hadn't checked my email yet, as there are very few things I ever do in the morning before drinking some coffee, but the urgency in Josh's voice prompted me to, and boy am I glad that I did. Alan's email was brief and to the point. A link, and the text, "Seriously let's get it."




You see, I had been on a mission, a mission prompted by a seemingly simple plan hashed out by a few friends over a few pints at the Ear Inn in the West Village of New York City: Go vintage racing with a VW. And this GTI could indeed be our answer. It was advertised as an IMSA GTU car, a spare, which had never seen the track. Interesting.



On premise it sounds simple enough, but the simple fact of the matter is that most old VW racing cars are pretty well worn, if they're even still around in the first place. We had almost pulled the trigger on a very well developed Mk1 Swallow tail, but this GTI on Bring a Trailer was something special, something that had factory ties. This was something worth restoring, not just another ITs*box, as a lot of these cars tend to be.



So I sent an email out immediately, not really expecting to score such a find for such a reasonable price...someone had certainly gotten there either ahead of me, or would wave a substantially larger sum around and that would be it. $2800 for a race car with factory ties is a steal, and I knew it wouldn't last long. After a few agonizing hours I got word back from the guys at BaT - shoot an email over to the owner they said, and yes, interest had been quite high.

So I did. I made things as straightforward as possible, hoping to appeal to the seller to perhaps give me a chance on the basis of treating the car right. Alan is already an accomplished vintage racer, with an MGB I've mentioned here before, and our plan was to take this GTI and give it a complete, no-holds barred restoration before putting it back on the track where it belonged. It wasn't to see the street, it wasn't to get an engine swap, and most certainly wasn't to be parted out. If we got the car it would be on the track at Lime Rock, at Watkins, and where-ever else we could find an event to run it in. Would it work? Time would tell.



My phone rang again a few hours later with a number I didn't recognize. Breathing in deeply I picked up and then things began moving quickly. "I can't believe the interest in this car, it's really been amazing," the owner Steve said. "It's taken me all day so far to get through these emails."

Not the opening lines I was hoping to hear, even though they were exactly what I was expecting. Still, he didn't say the car was sold yet, so there was hope. I began to chat with Steve about the GTI, piecing together what he told me with what I had found out during my research at lunch. The IMSA GTI was a display car, prepared by Portland Racing but was never actually put on the track. It was carted around by Volkswagen to various motorsport events in 1985 as part of their 'VW Sport Caravan' - a rolling example of tuned VWs for the street and track.



The GTI had been put into storage sometime soon after VW changed direction with their racing efforts, probably 1986, as the Portland Racing deal seems to have been a 1-year effort at most. There it sat until 1991, when VW of America's Motorsport division gifted the car to (Charles) Mark Molnar, the 1990 SCCA production class rally champion. Mark's intention was to use the car and race it, but before anything could be done he suffered a career-ending accident, destroying his current GTI completely and keeping the IMSA GTI off the track.



There it sat in Mark's back yard, languishing, for over a decade. Around 2002 the decision was finally made to put the car and its trailer up for sale, which is where Steve came into the picture. "You know to be honest, I bought it as much for the trailer as I did for the car," he joked on the phone.



A few attempts were made to restore the car as a racer for Steve's son, but eventually those were put on hold in the interest of putting together something that was more of a dual-purpose machine, so again the GTI sat. It was put on sale several times over the years, never quite finding the right audience or purchaser, and finally after going up on Bring a Trailer people were already beating down Steve's door for the chance to own it, throwing out higher offers and filling his inbox even as we spoke.



"So what will it take to lock this car down?" I asked. Steve pondered for a moment and named his price. Considering what I had just heard, and the fact the car was only advertised at $2800, it was more than reasonable, and a deal was struck. Unbelievable. We had prevailed. We had beaten the swarming herds from the internet and gotten our dream machine. A race car with no damage, factory ties, and although in need of full restoration, something that would look right at home going up against the Nissans, Porsches, Mazdas, MGs and BMWs that are so common in vintage racing.



So what had we just bought anyway? Well, it's hard to say for sure...the Google trail doesn't really take us very far, but thanks to some helpful commenter over on BaT, the IMSA History website, and the unbelievably good motorsport archives of Mark Windecker, a picture begins to emerge.

Eric Randolph being pushed by track workers in the #03 Portland Racing GTI. Photo: Mark Windecker

VW Sport had at least two GTIs campaigned by Portland Racing, the makers of this GTI, in 1985. They did not however run in GTU as the ad first mentioned, they ran in the RS Series. Also known as the Champion Spark Plug Challenge, GTIs would have run in the ProFormance class for FWD hot-hatches. The rules were fairly liberal with regards to engines and engine modifications with the exception of displacement increases and valve size increases, but compression, carburetion, camshaft specifications and head work were pretty much open. Chassis could be stiffed with roll-cages, shocks could be changed, but the car could not sit more than 1" lower than stock, and the wheels should be the same offset and size as the car rolled off the showroom floor with. Oh yeah, and no giant sized fenders.

Here we see the #04 Portland Racing GTI behind two Mazdas and a Chevrolet, driver unknown. Photo: Mark Windecker

Hmm. So what is this GTI then? Well we'll see...before we can dig that deep, we needed to go get the car. An adventure which proved to be certainly more than we bargained for, as you will hear and see.



Before signing off on our first installment on the IMSA GTI, I'd like to give a big thanks to Steve for seeing that we plan on nothing but the best for the GTI, and perhaps even passing up some higher offers to do so. I think that says a lot about the vintage racing community, and without that we'd still be looking...so thanks very much. More soon.

_WRS