Peter Simpson
VW Passat 1.8 20v
Year: 1998
Mileage: 54,000
Current Mods: Rear badges removed, de-badged grille, 3G Brakes, German number plates, blue paint for calipers
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The car as found in its standard form |
Let me introduce you to my VW Passat 1.8 20v normally aspirated estate; yes, estate! I have reasons for getting an estate. One is I moved and the house needs lots of work so it’s good for loading up with rubbish. The second is I have a Great Dane called Doofus who needed a lot of space to lounge in.
Now back to the Passat in hand. Firstly when I was looking for a Passat I had a few requirements – it needed to be black and have history with around the 50,000 mile mark on the clock. Not too hard, I thought. Looking at Autotrader etc I struggled to find a black Passat. I thought I may have to go for another colour until my local free paper revealed a black Passat estate 1998 at 53,000 miles. It sounded perfect so I gave the seller a call and even better it was just six miles away!
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| Some nice boy racer blue calipers |
When I arrived the car looked quite sound; only a few scratches and a couple of small dents but hey it is nearly 10 years old. After checking it out it had full service history, Xenon lights, heated front seats, headlight washer jets and sat nav as upgraded from the factory. It had electric windows, height adjustable seats and steering. Everthing seemed to work well apart from the sat nav which is a bit old and flickers.
So out came the deposit and I returned the next day to collect the car. When I got it home I thought it was time to try and make it a little bit respectable. So the badges came off the back. Then, while at GTI International that weekend, I bought a de-badged front grille and while I was trading Performance Tuner I fitted it.
Next was to get rid of the original number plate as it ended in CFC and I’m no Chelsea fan so a private plate was in order. A scan through the number plates on DVLA and P5 WOB was the plate I liked. The reason behind this was basic; P5 is similar to my initials, and WOB being the short name for VW’s home town, Wolfsburg. These plates are in a German-look font from Germanplates.com and at $30 a pair they look cool.
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And here's the car after the first few
mods. Subtle yet effective |
Next on the list were some decent brakes, so 3G Ultimate Braking came to the rescue. It supplied us with a full set of GR-10 discs; the most basic of the brake sets but then I only have 125bhp...
The pads were standard Mintex which are great but at present – I must add – squeak like I have mice hiding in the tyres (I’m sure this will go away soon after a few more miles of bedding them in).
When I fitted the discs and pads I gave the calipers a good clean... and yes, I did the boy racer thing and painted the calipers blue so they were the same colour as the Golf R32’s calipers. Next to do is get the Passat slammed, take delivery of the 18 inch tyres from Dunlop and a set of Schmidt wheels from Volker Schmidt in Germany. Nice one! PS
