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NEWS
SEMA: Beetle – Turning Japanese
We chat one-to-one with Tanner Foust about his new Beetle projectTanner Foust is right: nobody really modifies Beetles. Look around SEMA and you'll see pumped and gunned Subarus, Hondas, BMWs but not VWs. Have we forgotten that the first generation Golf created the hot hatch market? When finished this Beetle will owe much to the latest generation Golf.
A few weeks before SEMA, this was just a basic Volkswagen Beetle living a leisurely life on VW North America's corporate fleet in Southern California.
"It is mine now and I've got it for three years," says Foust leading into a planned list of modifications that will finish with the project pushing about 300kW with all-wheel-drive. "It will be basically the same as a Golf R400 and will use the Golf R's 2.0-litre engine."
For now, the Beetle is a cosmetic work in progress. The body, now eight inches wider across the front, was extended from the bonnet shutline to enlarge the wheel wells to house 18x10in Motegi Racing Traklite wheels and 18x12in wheels at the rear.
"Check out the huge dish offset on the wheels," Foust points out. His concept for the build is to maximise visual performance and real performance with bits and pieces likely to come from VW Germany and cross influencing the mechanicals with the Japanese tradition of style and detail.
"The Japanese have a way of identifying what is already good about a car and enhancing it," said Foust. "They also have the ability to grab the attention of a younger audience."
The Beetle will be more than a marketing ploy for Foust and the associated sponsors that range from Alpinestars to Eneos oil. "Alpinestars saw images of the car and in less than a week made a pair of driving boots that match the car's dark orange colour and air-freighted them to me for SEMA. I'll be using them next season," said Foust.
With 300kW spread through an advanced all-wheel-drive system (that may be surprisingly similar to Foust's competition rallycross Beetle) to a chassis tuned by Foust, it will evolve into a Beetle with a serious bite.
RAUH-Welt Begriff is a Porsche tuner in Japan with a reputation for blending Porsche performance with Japanese style and aesthetics. RWB's Akira Nakai will work with Foust as they develop the power package and handling, and innovate and adapt modifications from body to boots on the ground.
"Many Porsche owners like the Beetle. The Beetle is a very good car and it looks like a Porsche a little bit," said Nakai. "It is similar, but a Beetle is not a Porsche, so we made a completely new design for this Beetle."
It is the first Beetle project for Nakai. The team at RAUH-Welt Begriff worked to this point with LTMOTORWERKS in El Monte, California for the physical build.
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Written byTodd Hallenbeck
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