Wolfsburg Influence

Clark Caughey was a VW man through and through, but a failed Golf project saw him build this stunning R53 Cooper S for the 2016 show season.

- Martyn Collins

Given that he’s such a dyed-in-the-wool Volkswagen enthusiast (he’s owned six Golfs), the first question I have to ask Belfast-based Clark is how he ended up with this MINI Cooper S?

The story starts with a previous car, a MK5 Golf GTI, which was built to show standard and won an impressive 14 trophies over the three years he owned it. During that time Clark was sponsored by a bodyshop where the Golf had been given a full respray in Nissan Midnight Purple.

When the time came for Clark to sell the Golf last year, the owner of the bodyshop was seriously keen to buy it but didn’t have the full price that Clark was asking. So what to do? “He sees himself as a bit of a wheeler dealer, so I sent him a link to this Cooper S that I’d seen and told him if he could haggle the price down on it enough to work within his budget, I’d take it as a part exchange,” Clark explains. The pair went to viewed the MINI the same day and it was parked on Clark’s driveway that night.

The original plan was for Clark to keep the MINI standard and use it as daily driver, while he painted another Golf, an R32-engined MK2 project. However, Clark tells me that this Golf was fighting him every step of the way and he realised that, although it was very solid, he was never going to be happy with the shell – it was a five-door and someone had butchered an aftermarket sunroof into it. The plan for that Golf project was to go race car style: swap the engine, strip out the interior, cage it and paint it inside and out. “I’d bought the BBS E49s to run on it as they had motorsport heritage and were period correct for the MK2. I’d also booked it in for a custom cage to be made,” Clark explains.