Overlooked: Michael Wood’s 2008 VW GTI

Very few things re­ally get to me any­more. I typ­i­cally like to kick back and have a good time, es­pe­cially when I at­tend a car get to­gether. I have found though, as I get a lit­tle older and start to ap­pre­ci­ate the work put into a car that one thing re­ally bugs me. When scrolling through a car blog it is easy to see a car that has the set it and for­get it rule done; the owner slapped a set of coil overs on the car and threw some wheels on and BOOM! In­stant fame, in­stant fea­ture and plas­tered all over the in­ter­net. Well in this case, Michael Wood has seem­ingly been over­looked. Canibeat de­cided that this was not go­ing to hap­pen any long, so with­out fur­ther adieu here is Mr. Wood’s beau­ti­ful GTI.

As a VW head for the past few years now Michael Wood is on his sec­ond Volk­swa­gen. His prior GTI was a MK4 that sported every­thing from a big turbo to a full man­ual trans­mis­sion swap, but sadly this car met its end due to an ac­ci­dent in­volv­ing a park­ing curb and a twisted frame. The MK5 was up next and Mike wanted to go in a lit­tle dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion. Be­ing a newer ve­hi­cle and sport­ing the 2.0T mo­tor the en­gine mod­i­fi­ca­tion was left light. Woody as he is also known went for an APR Stage 2 chip, a BSH in­take, and a 3 inch Euro Cus­toms ex­haust. To give the mo­tor a lit­tle more shine a cav­al­cade of Forge good­ies were tossed un­der the hood in­clud­ing a catch can, oil cap, and coolant cap. Though the en­gine mod­i­fi­ca­tions have re­main mild Woody told us he plans to do a big turbo build and push for 450 wheel horse­power!

When look­ing over the out­side of this GTI it is hard to miss the dif­fer­ences from its stock coun­ter­parts. The first thing is

this GTI is ac­cented in the front with the highly pop­u­lar Vo­tex lip. Look around to the sides and you’ll find Vo­tex side skirts, and if you con­tinue to the back then an OEM R32 rear will slap you in the face and then bel­low at you with the Euro Jet ex­haust tips. The rear is fin­ished off with a set of Euro LED tail lights to add that OEM plus fla­vor. Woody knew when build­ing this car he wanted to do some­thing spe­cial with the wheels and to get the fit­ment he de­sired a plan had to be hatched. En­ter Mel­bourne lo­cal and owner of De’Caudella’s cus­tom body shop Clay Dean. Dean and Woody sat down and con­cluded that a pulled rear and widened front fend­ers would be the only way to fit the wheels Woody had in mind, and so it was done! The car now sat wider and more ag­gres­sive, and the next step was to add the wheels.

The wheels were some­thing Woody re­ally put a lot of ef­fort into, choos­ing to do the en­tire re­build him­self. The se­lec­tion was a set of Work VS-XX and the goal? Well to build them to a fi­nal spec of 18×9.5 front et 32 and 18×10.5 rear et 35. A good sized 3 and 3.5 inch lips shine on all four cor­ners of the GTI, and the widen fend­ers al­low the body to sit per­fect when aired out…….Oh I for­got to men­tion that. This car sits on Air­lift Per­for­mance se­ries sus­pen­sion, us­ing the ad­justable cam­ber up front to al­low the front wheel to pull in and sit just right.

The in­te­rior of the GTI re­mains sub­tle, re­tain­ing the stock In­ter­lago plaid seats. Woody be­ing an em­ployee of SeaDek used his cre­ative side at work and mocked up a set of cus­tomer floor mats and a cus­tomer trunk deck. To fin­ish off the in­te­rior a cus­tomer, color matched air tank and small hard­line set up rest easy in the hatch of this MK5.

Woody has taken a lot of time and put a lot of ef­fort into his MK5 pro­ject over the years. De­spite be­ing over­looked the MK5 has fi­nally got it’s time to shine. Michael took a mo­ment to let us know he had a few peo­ple to thank in this build, in­clud­ing the most im­por­tant is his lovely girl­friend Al­i­son, his friends that have all had a hand in this build.

Fonte: CaniBeat