After years spent languishing in farmyards and garages, Daniel Beckwith’s Golf GTI finally made its show debut at Ultimate Dubs. We were there as he unwrapped his gift to the scene…
There are few modifying scenes quite as competitive as the VAG crew. Certain touchpoints through the show calendar ensure that everyone’s constantly clamouring for a fresh look to shock and amaze; you’ve got to roll into Ultimate Dubs with a new set of rims or a flash new colour, then change it all up for Wörthersee, and by the time Players rolls around at the end of the season the car will be unrecognisable from how it was just a few short months ago. For this reason, you find a lot of people battering their credit cards again and again, money being seemingly no object in the pursuit of likes and shares.
But for some people, it’s more personal. People like Daniel Beckwith, who have come from a household passionate about cars, whose VAG builds are based on cars that have been with them for years and years. These people aren’t scene butterflies or fashionistas, they’re in it for the love. The Mk3 Golf GTI you see here hasn’t simply been snapped up because the Mk3 is on-trend right now; it’s been sitting in the wings for years, biding its time and waiting for its moment to shine.
“It’s all my dad’s fault really,” Daniel laughs. “He was a mechanic when I was young, working for Land Rover and being into off-road stuff as well as the classics – I was always with him on road trips and going to shows, and my passion grew from there.”
When he turned seventeen, he got himself a Rover 400 as a first car, and proceeded to do what every burgeoning petrolhead does: fill it with massive speakers. “The first thing I did was drive down to Car Audio Security – they had a sale on,” Daniel grins. “I got a new sub, amp and head unit, plus obviously a load of stickers…”
Stickers add horsepower when you’re a teenager, everyone knows that, but unfortunately it won’t save your cambelt from snapping and sending all the valves bouncing around the head, which is what happened next. A serendipitous occurrence, however, as it then led to Daniel buying his first Mk3 Golf – a 1.4, which inevitably also received the requisite stickers as well as being lowered. And it was then that things started to snowball.
Fate decided to roll the dice at this point, and it came up double-sixes for Daniel: his dad was working for Audi by this time, and a Mk3 Golf GTI 16v came in as part-exchange. It had received a respray in the recent past and was running alluringly low along with having a few external upgrades, and unbeknownst to Daniel, his dad bought the GTI for him as an eighteenth birthday present…
Want to know more? Check out the full feature in Fast Car magazine issue 396 on sale now in all good shops, the Fast Car online shop or alternatively download Fast Car magazine 396 now.
