I purchased the car in the summer of 1996. I had looked for this car for over a year and a half. I flew to New Hampshire to look at the car. The car was in excellent condition so I purchased the car at the airport and drove it back to Ohio. It only had about 80,000 miles on it then.
The only problem with the car when I purchased it was the infamous stalling from a bad WBV. It took me some time to figure out what the problem was but I did determine it on my own. I'm not sure if the 200Q20V list was around then but it sure would have been helpful.
The first modification was the Intended Acceleration Stage III chip to get the power up to about 280HP. This is a highly recommended modification. I have almost 180,000 miles on my car now and have the original turbo and have never done anything internal to the motor. I drive my car very hard and am into all the boast I can use as often as possible. The car is awesome.
I do use Mobil 1 15-50 Synthetic oil and change it every 4,000 miles. The car uses less than half a quart of oil in 4,000 miles even with all the miles and the original turbo. Did I mention that this is an awesome car.
About two and half years ago I converted to the Euro Lights and this is a must do conversion. The car is just not safe without them. I would recommend this to anyone considering this car or owning one. It was not pleasant to drive without lights at night. Now my lights are among the best I have ever had on a car. What an incredible difference. You will forget about the cost as soon as you drive it the first time with the new lights.
Last year I decided to convert the suspension to H&R Springs and Bilstein Shocks. This made a tremendous improvement in the handling of this car. It minimized the nose dive during heavy braking which made the car much more controllable during heavy braking. It is a little harsher riding on poor condition roads but is totally acceptable for daily driving.
I also upgraded the braking system to the Bira brake system which consists of Porsche Boxster calipers with A8 rotors. This is a great conversion and is a nice improvement over the UFO rotors. The UFO rotors are a good system but the Bira brake system is fantastic. I never had the problems with warping, that other's have had, with the UFO rotors but I attribute this to my fast driving style and heavy braking which I think may be better for the UFO rotors. I ran my UFO rotors almost to the cooling fins and they never warped. The Bira brake design is much easier and cheaper to maintain. It also looks great with the new 16 inch 5 spoke Borbet Type-E wheels. It even looks good with the winter A8 rims that I used this year.
These are the autocross track wheels with Kumho VictoRacer V-700 tires.
Below are some pictures of my car with the different wheels.
