VW Sport IMSA GTI (Part 4, so what about that paint)

After initial inspection of the VW Sport Caravan GTI we were left with a pretty clear picture of what the car was (very clean) and what it wasn't (track ready). It has all the appearances of a race car, but without a fuel cell, fire system or ignition kills it was obvious that some fairly significant changes would need to happen to get it close to that level, and that's before we're talking about mechanical bits like the engine or suspension.

But before all that could even be thought about, we had to figure out whether or not any body or paint work would need to happen. So with this in mind, Alan, Josh and I all took a good look at it and tried to figure out what to do.


As mentioned in part 3 almost all of the graphics are hand-painted onto the car. This means that replicating them would be expensive / impossible / or perhaps both. The upside of this is that the paint is generally in remarkably good shape. It looks to be very well done for being an aftermarket job - the car was fully stripped and prepped when it was painted and other than some fading on the graphics there is a lot of shine left in it.



Even with some basic cleaner wax and a few seconds of scrubbing we saw improvement.



To be honest, I would think that just washing the car would help bring the paint back at least 50% from where it is now. A professional detailer could probably get it back to about 90% of what it was originally with very minimal burn-through. So Alan, Josh and myself have decided that keeping the paint is by far the best option. It will save money, it will be more original, and it will look damn cool out on the track with a bit of it's natural patina.



The black sections on the hood, roof and hatch are going to represent the biggest challenge, along with the primer sections that the previous owner applied to help keep surface rust at bay. A lot of paint was coming off with the cleaner wax, so we'll need to be careful.



So the problem with this plan of attack lies in those gorgeous fenders. We're hoping to make copies - after all it's going to be on the track and problems can occur even in relatively tame vintage events - but we're not sure if we can make copies and save the original paint and graphics. If anyone happens to know how we might successfully make copies by all means get in touch.

 

This is Alan by the way, checking out the interior and cage. Alan's got a number of years under his belt in racing vintage MGs, and has been our primary inspiration and motivation behind getting a vintage VW and putting it back out on the track.



So with everything decided on paint we were feeling very up about the car. We knew what had to be done, but mechanical work is fairly simple compared to restoration of paint and body work.

Shortly after Part 3 went live, Mark Windecker posted up another picture of a Portland Racing GTI to our Facebook page. This one also gave us a new name to use when searching for clues: David Rugh. Quite a few items of interest came up via some Google searches, which led me to believe we were very close to finding out the true story of the VW Sport Caravan GTI. David lives in Portland, races a VW Corrado in the SCCA, and is still actively racing today.

We've just got done speaking with David who confirmed he did indeed build this car for Volkswagen, but its true reason for being is completely different from what everyone had been assuming, and it has changed everything.

Stay tuned for Part 5: The truth is revealed (And what do we do now)

_WRS