One of the great debates in the modified car world, is the DIY’er vs. a shop built car. Sure, some shops have come up with absolutely beautiful cars with insane attention to detail for their customers. The owner of the car drops it off as one thing, and picks it up as another, never once getting their hands dirty. Pretty simple for the owner, but expensive. In addition, not everyone was born to work on cars. Some have hectic schedules. Some lack the patience and experience. Some don’t have a spot to do it. Some just don’t want to be bothered with all the hassles. And that’s all well and good. Now what about the other side of the story? The Do-It-Yourself guy. The guy that does the research, buys his supplies, and works through the problems and hassles with what he has available to him. He may drive the car around with different color panels for awhile.  Or maybe missing some panels completely.  But he gets the satisfaction of knowing everything that went into making the car what it is in the end. Knowing every time someone stops in their tracks to look, it was because of something they did. I am fortunate to know one of these guys and his name is Matt Zwilling .

I’ve known Matt for about a year and a half and he’s become a good friend of mine.  He drives a 2003 24V VR6 GLI. Now I saw this car before he started going crazy with it and it looked like this:

Not bad, right? Simple. Clean. What more could you want? Well a lot more is the answer. Matt has been progressively working on his car, in his own garage, with his own tools, on his own time. He doesn’t have any shops do any work for him. He doesn’t have anyone paying the bills for him. He doesn’t have any credit card debt. And he doesn’t have any sponsorships. He’s spent the last 14 months turning this car into his own. In those 14 months he’s done an incredible amount of work and spent countless nights turning wrenches on his car. Must be nice to have all this free time. Wait? Did I say free time? Full time students don’t have much free time. Between classes and projects for school, Matt finds time to work on his car while still keeping a social life intact. Not to mention helping work on other peoples cars too.

Matt doesn’t have a crazy setup. Just a garage and your average tool set with a few odd and end tools thrown in the mix. There are no air tools. There is no heat in the garage, although it is attached to the house. I’d guess the average dead of winter temperature in there is hovering around the 50 degree mark. He does have a tiny space heater, but it turns on and off on it’s own more often than Brett Favre goes in and out of retirement. There’s nothing fancy about it, but he always manages to get the work done. There is no instant gratification here. It’s a progression. He’s driven the car around with it looking like absolute crap. But it didn’t bother him a bit because he knows in his head how incredible the final product will be. Oh, did I mention this is his daily driver? He doesn’t have the luxury of leaving this car in the garage and working on it when he pleases. This is his only car. He only works on it when he doesn’t have to be somewhere. It still amazes me how he gets this amount of work done on such a tight schedule.

In the end, I’m privileged to know Matt and I’m glad he’s become a good friend. He is what is right about the VW community.  He helps out his friends and works on their cars.  He doesn’t hide his secrets. He doesn’t whore out what he’s doing.  He has one build thread.  That’s it.  That thread is FULL of knowledge and how-to’s. He’s answered tons of questions about everything he’s done to it from the super charger to the headliner to the shaved bay.  He isn’t seeking a feature in a magazine.  He isn’t seeking “internet fame.”  He’s doing this for himself.  He’s doing it to hopefully inspire other people to start working on their own cars.

The car isn’t done yet.  Like I said earlier, it’s a progression.  There are a few small things he has left to tackle, and hopefully come spring time or early summer, it’ll be ready for a paint booth.  If you want to get inspired, check out his build thread I linked above.  And you can bet, when this car is done, that it’ll be back up on our blog.  Here are a few pictures from along the way:

skinnykid