Photos + Words by: James Wallace / Jarno Aantjes
Worthersee 2010
The best thing about the Worthersee Treffen is the sheer scale and diversity of the worlds largest VW gathering, but is the pre-meet phenomenon leading to a watered down experience for the masses?
For 29-years now the Worthersee Treffen has long been considered the daddy of the VW show scene, if you haven’t heard of it then you’re clearly either dead or you’ve been living without print media and the interweb for some time.
In a nutshell, it’s huge! The entire 14 mile long Alpine lake is consumed by the best collarboration of VW talent that mainland Europe has to offer, even the average cars are still mindblowingly detailed thought through and well screwed together that it’s enough to make your eyes water. So as we dock the other side of the Euro Tunnel and venture onto French soil with a little over 850 miles ahead of us and nothing but pitch black, totally empty auto route stretching into the distance, we’re understandably excited.
The HAVOC T5 bus of love is fully fuelled and the TOM TOM is about to take a pounding of a continental persuasion. Oh yes, the Austrian Riviera beckons and we’ve got high expectations for seven days of automotive nirvana and booze fuelled tales to take back home. Cultural relations amongst the VW fraternity overseas are surprisingly easy to generate, and even with our poor German we’re really looking forward to catching up with some old mates and sharing a tin of Jack D n Coke while ogling faultless mechanical masterpieces.
Fast forward 14 hours and we’re at our lovely little B+B not far from Velden at the west end of lake Worthersee. We’ve obliterated France, Germany and Austria in what feels like a heartbeat, but let me tell you that while 850 miles and 14 hours sounds like easy going, it’s a fairly dull and monotonous experience, so massive G+ respect goes out to the lads who drove from the UK in the slammed Mk1 Polo, Mk1 Golf and the Caddy with the MTBs in the back. We didn’t get to have a chat with you but we think you’re fully insane! If you’re considering making the epic journey next year in anything older than a Mk4 Golf we doth our caps in your direction.
We actually arrived in Maria Worth the Saturday before the show officially kicked off and headed straight for the Shell garage in Velden. There a satin black Mk5 R32 with Lamborghini brakes and 530bhp HGP turbo conversion looked incredibly menacing, a Mk2 Polo Breadvan with a turbocharged 1.4-litre engine and an old skool Passat coupe almost taking our breath away. A crazy Mk3 Golf with split lambo style doors smacked of absolute innovation even if it was a little bit Fast ‘n’ Furious for our tastes. Choosing a personal favourite from our week long odessey is very difficult but a Mk2 Passat Estate fitted with a tweaked 5-cylinder S2 engine certainly seemed like the ultimate sleeper with which to embarrass sports car royalty. Then there was a staggering dutch white Mk2 thay took plenty of praise thanks to it’s Mk5 Golf dashboard, 2.0T-FSI engine transplant and Mk6 steering wheel – fully bonkers by all accounts.
Dutchman Corne Schop bought out his newly rebuilt Rallye complete with Rotrex supercharged R32 engine, even though some oil supply issues had caused his C30 /94 charger to implode and few days earlier. Jereon Dirk had his air ride A4 rolling obscenely low and German tuning specialists Turbo Elite had their 650+bhp continually evolving Mk3 Golf out to play with Techart Formula carbon rims, Porsche 6-pot brakes clamping 360 RS4 discs and a faintly mental Garrett GT42 RS turbo blowing through an R36 engine. The evolution this car has undergone beggars belief as we featured it a few years back when it was running a 2.9 VR Turbo lump having started life with a humble 110bhp TDi mill in there.
Bram Jansen’s Mk2 G60 16v with cream engine bay also caused us to stop in our tracks and we’ll hopefully be bringing you more on this one soon. A staggering German Mk1 G60 on polished Porsche twisty split rims and the most amazing interior you’ve ever seen ranked up there with a list of ‘favourites’ that could easily stretch into triple figures. Quite simply everywhere you look there’s something new to take your breath away.
Worthersee is so significant nowadays that manufacturer backing from Volkswagen, Skoda, Audi and SEAT was present in a big way. All four chose to unveil tweaked variants of existing model ranges with Audi trumping the lot thanks to the R8 GT V10 and it’s new uber hatch the A1. Whether we’ll get either in the UK remains to be seen.
VW had a myriad different Mk6 GTIs from their Individual brand extension with one knocking 350bhp, a bespoke interior, 19-inch wheels and lowered and uprated factory suspension. The Mk6 GTI Excessive and the official launch of the Amarok pick up truck dominated what was a fairly dull stand compared to the stylish exuberance of Audi and Skoda. Nevertheless the money that they’re pumping into the official show dates is clearly seen as a hindrance rather than having a positive effect. Like it or not, the truly amazing, mind scrambling metal is long gone before the official show kicks off, and increasingly this year we felt a return to a collection of increasinly underground, niche gatherings taking place as euro clubs take matters into their own hands and host their own small get togethers around the lake in places such as Schiefling and the Pyramiden Kogel viewpoint, clubs like Cleaned.be, Low Familia and VW Home.de organising their own little round ups. This basically means that without a car you’re quite limited as to what’s accessible, and unless you arrive upto a week and a half before the official show dates there’s a good chance you’re going to miss something special.
Trends wise it’s safe to say that air ride, satin / matt paint and the weirdest most unique wheels you can find or modify are here to stay. Contrasting engine bays, camo wraps, carbon fibre, air cooled cars and old school Audis and Passats seemed to dominate in the wow stakes. If there’s one thing that Worthersee proves it’s that you can do whatever you want to your car and as long as you like it that’s what really matters. Individuality is king and who gives a toss what anyone else thinks.
Yet perhaps the most amazing thing about Worthersee is that no two groups of people ever have the same sort of trip, it’s literally so massive and so diverse that you can please yourself about the sort of experience you enjoy. Nonetheless… as the rampant commercialisation and glamour of the big name manufacturers takes its grip, we can’t see it staying the same. Some even reckon it will change completely within the next five years as the real cream of the crop arrives earlier and earlier each year. But one thing is for sure, whenever you get here the spectacle and grandeur of this event makes it a one off experience unlike anything else we’ve ever attended. Book those flights, ready the car, tell the boss you want the time off and rally some friends… this is a very special place and you certainly won’t regret it. Get in touch with us if you haven’t got any VW mates and let the road trip begin!