Matt Barnes
We're waiting on a cold, cobbled street corner in London's East End; a stones throw from the River Thames. Add some fog and a few cheerful Cockneys and we could be in a Sherlock Holmes movie.
We're waiting for Sukh Pui and his Corrado. Their arrival is announced by a menacing rumble, punctuated by the whistle of a turbo as it tiptoes over speed humps.
The Iris blue SLC rounds the corner and the full impact of Sukh's project can be seen, lower than a snake's ass and bluer than Adriana Lima's eyes.
A resident of West London, England and a founder member of the original Westside VW crew, Sukh's an electronics engineer who's been soaked in the Veedub scene virtually since its inception. The list of former rides is long and distinguished; he came to his Corrado ten years ago by way of a Mk1 GTI, Mk1 Scirocco, Mk2 16v, Corrado G60, a few Audis, Passat, a TT and a brief fling with a Porsche - he doesn't want to talk about that!
Sukh's job frequently takes him to mainland Europe, and at the turn of the millennium he decided to go to the source to find the right car. He discovered his '92 Corrado on mobile.de; Deutschlands 'größter fahrzeugmarkt'. But surprisingly, this particular Corrado was originally registered in the good ol' US of A. Virginia, to be precise!
"Once I found the car I had a mate call the owner since I don't speak German. We
arranged a viewing and flew over. The owner kept it in a barn, so his cat slept on it. He bought it to work on but never got round to it," Sukh told us. "It was a reddish-brown color with a 2.8 VR6 rather than the 2.9L found in Europe. The owner had bought a set of 16x10'' Edition S1 wheels, but couldn't fit them until the fenders were widened. We couldn't agree on a price, so I left it. Once back in London, I called the owner a few times and we finally made a deal."
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