My best friend and I (both petrolheads) have similar likes and dislikes when it comes to cars/things with engines. I jumped on the German bandwagen long before he did, but he just bought himself a 13' Golf TDI cheater and swears he’ll never go back. We’ll see what he says after he has a bad day, but he seems pretty confident and that is a pretty solid car.
Anyway, One thing that always has had us both kind of stumped is the Volkswagen community. The ratio of modded to not modded seems higher than nearly any other make. Most of the time those mods aren’t cheap either (or tasteful but that’s neither here nor there). Almost every GTI we see has been at least slightly modified.
It didn’t hit me until last Saturday. As we were working on the cars I said, “ya know, I’m starting to understand why VW heads are always doing stuff to their cars.” He agreed pointing out all of the things we have both changed in our short periods of ownership and mentioning another friend that was hardcore into VW’s.
It seems like most of the mods for VW’s are an immediate tangible gain. That and the clean layout (of the later models at least) make them pretty easy to work on. I’d go as far to say as it’s my favorite car to work on at the moment.
I called the VW dealer that is also an APR dealer just to get a little info, and ended up scheduling the work, haha. The guy said that they do the base tunes right off of the truck before buyers take delivery often. APR takes over my 6yr/72k power train warranty and they also warranty any other APR bolt on (that isn’t a turbo or downpipe) for the same time.
There are closer places, but I’m choosing to do this at an actual Volkswagen dealer to hopefully lessen the chances of any finger pointing between VW and APR in the event of a problem.
So I’m super excited about the performance gains, but I want something to do on it. I ordered the intercooler from APR as well, and that is a job so I’ll get my fix there.
Still, I find myself wanting stupid crap like the carbon fiber intake for nearly $500... You cannot convince me that those do anything better than the stock one on 99.9% of applications. But like, it looks cool and I want it. So when I fill up my washer fluid I can be like, “hehheh, that looks tight”.
I don’t have plugs, or Oakley’s, and I don’t vape (well not the kind you can use in a car anyway ;) Still, I can’t stop modding my Volkswagen.
