Pic Post: (vintage) Trans Am Scirocco (Souped / Unsouped)

I've been on a quest to find out more of the history of the Trans Am Scirocco racers. Feelers have been put out to some contacts for more period pictures (aside from what's already out there and floating around) and I hope that bears some fruit shortly. In the mean time, here's an advertisement touting the Scirocco as a proper sports sedan. It's a shame they don't sell the Mk3 Scirocco here in the states as it would be a real sales hit I think, but VW of America never seems to have their head quite straight when it comes to that stuff...

_WRS

Lime Rock Weekend Part Two: Koni Challenge

Sometimes things just get busy. It kind of drives me nuts, but I guess it's better to be busy than the converse, which is to have nothing going on at all. So with that, here we are finally visiting the May 23rd Grand-Am Koni Challenge race at Lime Rock Park.

I'm not sure if it's because I've had to go to events for work for so many years, but car shows really drive me mad. I get it on one level...lots of nice cars you would not typically see while driving down Main Street in Your Town, USA, share ideas and hang out with like minded people. That I love. It's the lack of visceral experience on the car end that make them a little boring. Sure that 'bagged Mk'XYZ' might look awesome sitting there in a parking lot, but that's about all it's doing at that ride height. Cars are (in my mind) modified to be better to drive first, look cool second. I'm just not thrilled by a car sitting still, no matter what the horsepower under the hood or potential speed it might possess.

So the Koni Challenge ST (Street Tuner) race was exactly my kind of event. Real world cars turned into track machines, fender to fender racing, no holds barred, all out for over two hours. One of my many "I should have done that" careers involves being a race car driver, just like the rest of the male population out there, so I was very, very, VERY excited to get a chance to participate in the VW owners corral in Lime Rock. The owners corral is a way for VW to get their car owners out to the track and maybe get a taste of just how much fun real motorsport events are. APR Motorsport, being the most serious (and successful) VW race team in the USA in a long time, is also there to give out shirts, answer questions, and give away signed race tires. Cool stuff like that.

One of the real highlights of the day were the parade laps. Included in your owner's Corral ticket was the chance to drive two laps of Lime Rock. Sure it was in a group behind a pace car, but the speeds still got up there a bit. (I think the WRS-mobile got up to 70mph at one point) Things were kept to a minimum down the front stretch, but once the pace car dipped into turn one and kit the esses, it took off, allowing the cars top single file it through the turns and really get a taste of the track. It. Was. Awesome. Leaving turn one at the top of second, hitting 3rd for just a bit before going through the esses, and so on... Even the future Mrs WRS had a blast, and she's not one for the speedy driving to say the least. Everyone was relatively well behaved, no one broke down or wrecked, and I'd imagine it gave a few other people the urge to get back out there again.

The most intense section of the track has to be the dip going-into the uphill right-hander after the no-name straight. We weren't going super fast at this point, as the organizers weren't under any illusions as to what would happen if they let Joe-VW in his street car blast through that section flat out. I was still at about 45-50mph though, so it was fast enough to be fun, and let me tell you, you can't appreciate that section of track until you drive it. As the track surface falls away you get roller-coaster stomach, which quickly changes to the sensation of you being slammed down into your seat as you blast up the hill. I would have done parade laps all day if I had the chance!

As you can see, this is a steep grade. Whatever lies over this hill is completely out of view of the driver until you are up over the top.

By the way, the race itself was awesome. APR scored pole position with the 171 car, and 181 was not too far behind. APR invited everyone from the corral to their garage area to see the cars up close and get an idea of the technical specs and rules of the series, plus meet and greet the drivers.

The threat of rain loomed all day, but it never did, and we had excellent conditions for the full 2.5 hour event. There were a good number of spins and incidents, including a very heavy wreck involving the Turner Motorsport BMW at the very beginning of the event. This was a real shame as it was a contender and would have only made the event that much more exciting.

As it was, the first three to four cars were no further than a few car lengths from each other for the entire race. It was that close. The 171 lead for what seemed like the entire race, and even when the caution came out for the 181, which died on the track right next to us with a fueling problem, they stayed out front. A win looked to be a sure thing.

Winning is anything but a sure thing however, and when the 181 went out of commission for a second time it allowed the field to group back up. The 171 battled to stay out front, but a little bit of contact with Compass360 allowed the Civic to slip by. A major shunt down the front stretch involving the other bright-orange Compass360 Civic and one of the Flat Out Mazda MX5's brought the caution out again, which is how the race ended. A second consecutive second-place finish. The team is, as Stephen said, just knocking on the door of their first win.

You would think that the guys from APR would be upset about this turn of events, considering they had the field behind them for almost the entire race, but they were anything but. In such a competitive series were the leader can be sent to the back of the pack with the smallest mistake, placing anywhere in the top 5 is a huge accomplishment. It's easy to be biased when you know a lot of the people involved, and when it's the team you're routing for to win, but Stephen, Keith and the rest of the crew are really great people, and are doing a great job of being ambassadors of the VW scene.

So with a few more races left in the season, I suggest everyone get out their calenders, go to the Koni Challenge website, and get out there to an event. I've been to a lot of much higher level (i.e. higher dollar) events in my day, but these guys lay it on the line for every lap of every race, and it's as good a show as any I've been to, if not even better. Be sure to check out the APR Lime Rock Park gallery for a TON of awesome shots from the weekend.

_WRS

(PS: APR did in fact score their first win just two weeks later, with the 181 car making up for the problems at Lime Rock and scoring first in class at Watkin's Glenn!)

The Golf A59: The car which could have changed VW Motorsport

The Golf A59 is far from a secret for the most part, but it still remains one of the most mysterious and interesting Volkswagens of all time. There is still some confusion though, mainly about exactly how many A59 prototypes were made, and where they are. I'll address those to the best of my ability, but I don't claim to be all knowing, just in a unique position. I'll explain that later.

ANYways. I fell in love with it the moment I laid eyes on it, reading an issue of European Car way back in the stone age of paper, ink and pretty much no internet. The A59 was amazing to me. All wheel drive, wide fenders and a body made of carbon / kevlar, 16x7.5" Speedline wheels, turbocharged from the factory, all that good stuff. Here was the car that would make the Rallye Golf G60 a pathetic footnote in the lineage of Golf-based race cars. As luck would have it, that was not the case. It certainly had the ingredients.


The basics are as follows: VW contacted Schmidt Motorsport of Germany and had them design the A59 for their motorsport branch. SMS consisted of several players in the rally and motorsport scene back in the 90's and late 80's. The team was lead by Konrad Schmidt, who was involved in the Audi Quattro rally program, so he was no stranger to the land of VW and Audi performance. Work on the project started around 1992, and was supposed to debut in 1994.

The A59 was to be a Group A / Group N machine, meaning 2500 would have been produced to homogate the car for the World Rally Championship. One of the more interesting aspects of the A59's design was that SMS did not use anything even close to a standard VW engine. VW's standard family of inline-4 motors are hopelessly undersquare. This is ideal for torque and average drivers and average driving conditions, but undersquare motors don't like to rev. A racing motor needs to rev. So rather than take the standard 1984cc 82mm x 92.8mm 16v engine and adapt that to competition use, a clean sheet design was used, with a perfectly square 86mm bore and 86mm stroke. That's more like it.


Of course the engine was turbocharged, and with the new head design this was apparently a necessity. SMS decided to use much large valves than an atmospheric engine would be able to take advantage of...they would rely on positive manifold pressure to make up for any loss in flow and efficiency at lower RPM's. In standard form it was said the A59 would make 275 hp @ 6000rpm, and 273lb/ft of torque at 3500rpm, with enough headroom to make 400hp unrestricted. Not bad at all.

Putting all this power to ground was a brand new all wheel drive system. Not the crap Syncro system which was used on the Rally, but an electronically controlled type, quite similar to the Haldex system currently used by VW in their 4-motion and R32 cars. Interior was to be outfitted with a digital dash, Recaro A8 seats and an optional competition roll cage.


But is was never put into production. At the time that the press was first learning of the A59 back in 1994, the project had already been shelved. Something about a recession...hmm...sounds familiar. VW Motorsport kept one of their two prototypes for the museum, where it was kept under wraps until the early 2000's when it was rolled out, sans engine. (why was that you ask? I'll fill in the blanks in a few days) A second prototype was made, as you can see from the pictures there is a substantial difference in the fender design and rear spoiler and air-intake area on the C-pillar, but it was either destroyed or has been lost.

There is not a third A59. SMS did however make three complete Carbon-kevlar body kits. The first is what is what is on the still-living A59 prototype with the duck-tail spoiler. The second is on the "lost" prototype, which had larger fender flares and the different rear spoiler and A-pillar treatment. This is the same design, as far as I can tell, as the third body kit.


The third bodykit was sitting on the shelf at SMS for nearly a decade, until an interested party with the cash to buy it (and the connections to know it existed in the first place) had it deliver lock stock and barrel to British Columbia. There the hood and rear wing were traded for parts, while the rest of the kit, including the side skirts, fenders, quarter pabels and front and rear bumpers were installed on a Blue 1997 Driver's Edition GTI VR6.

So what of this third kit? That is a post-in-progress. As soon as Blaksquirrel loads the images into the Flickr account, I'll be ready with a story.


A few more pics at the WRS Flickr page.... All I really have to say in the end, is imagine if this Golf had made it into production? Not only would it have been a worthy adversary to the Escort Cosworth, Impreza WRX and other cars of the day, but we would have a completely different family of engines to choose from. A perfectly square fresh design without the limitations of previous architecture. Something 100 times better than the 1.8t, which is a fine if slightly underwhelming engine at the end of the day: it was not designed for performance, it was designed to provide the torque of a small V6 while delivering better fuel economy. Anyway, I'll have more on the engine from the A59 soon enough....Stay tuned!

_WRS

Scirocco GT24, while we're on the subject

I can't tell you how pleased I am to finally have a Volkswagen racer as successful at its task as the the Scirocco GT24. A superb performance on all accounts, both in the preparation of the cars and the performance of the drivers. Of course, when you have the one and only Hans-Joachim Stuck on your team at the 'Ring, the driving talent equation is not in doubt.
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It's been a long time coming too. Too often Volkswagen seems content to allow the Audi brand to take the glory and the racing budget, leaving the flagship brand -for me anyway- drifting in the wind with semi-obscure Rally machines. Either entry level Super 1600 machines like the Polo kit car, or completely off the chart desert racers like the Touareg, which has little to do with the production model. Not that I don't love the Polo rally cars, but where was the GT3 for us VW fans? Where was the link between the track and the street? Finally it is here.

The Scirocco GT24 is a purpose built, no expense spared racecar, don't doubt that for a second, but the base car and its key components are essentially what you get with a new VW GTI. 2.0t TSi engine, DSG transmission, the works. The fact that they chose a DSG transmission and even more so the fact that all three cars not only finished the race, but claimed the top two spots in class really proves that when they put their mind to it, VW can go racing as well as anybody.

Sure it has a carbon fiber body, massive 362mm, 6-piston front brakes, an upgraded clutch package and limited slip differential to cope with increased output of 325hp and 296lb/ft of torque, and so on, but the DNA is there. It's the same uni-body construction, plus you can get most all of those upgraded items in the aftermarket. It feels good. Should you chose to upgrade your own VW 2.0t, you can even buy the same fuel pump used on the GT24 from APR here in the USA. No joke!

The only thing that would make me happier would be for VW to keep these cars in action and race them in a series. Preferably over here in the states. Granted, in this economy that may be asking a bit much, but a man can dream.

Also, VW, please sell this car in the USA. I've heard about the 20R model in the works. All wheel drive, DSG, S3 motor (same as the one used at the ring!). That would be enough for me to sell off my first born to get one on order.

As a bonus, check out this uber-cool clip from sportbilen.com of in-car footage at Sturup raceway in Sweden. In the rain no less!