All project cars are built for a reason, with so many parts on the market no two cars are the same and everyone has their own idea of what’s good and what’s bad.

There are three main areas of concentration when building a show car and they are engine, styling and ice, most cars will have all three areas modified but will be focused on one area in particular, the area that the owner focuses their concentration may depend on age as a car with 400bhp would be impossible for a young driver to insure, most people have some kind of budget of how much money they have to spend and then there is personal taste, some people like myself just like loud music.

Over the last ten years I have built five cars and im just about to start my sixth.

From the start my main interest has been car audio and my second car was a totally standard MKII Golf GTI with 16 x 12”JL subs in the back and in 1997 I used this car to compete in all the SCA Grand prix events around the country where I finished forth in my class in the final at wembely area.

Cars three and four where both fast, for myself I built another MKII Golf but this time I striped out the interior and fitted a supercharged 2.9ltr VR6 engine, and for my girlfriend I built a Nova with a tuned 2.0ltr 16v Astra GTE engine, both of these cars could do a standing quarter mile in under 14secs but it wasn’t long before I had a driving ban and speed was the issue.

According to the vascar device fitted to the Volvo T5 struggling to keep up my average speed over 5 miles in traffic on a rather busy M6 was 118mph, needless to say a 1 month driving ban was just around the corner, once I had my license back I then added a further six points to it, three once again for speeding and three for perfecting my racing start at a set of traffic lights.

With car five I decided that my driving license could take no more and went back to car audio and this time I would hit it hard, having already competed for the SCA I had lots of ideas of what I wanted to do and also how to do them, I looked through the magazine classifieds to find my new vehicle, an Escort van was chosen because it had lots of space inside and the styling part would be easier as many parts from the highly popular Escort car would bolt straight on, eventually I found the perfect van which was soon in my procession.

This was followed by a trip to Prestige audio to chat with car audio god Bob Hobson about the new sound system I needed, 95% of the system that is in the van now is exactly as we planned back in 1997, the only alterations being the removal of the VCR and a DVD player put back in its place, a newer Alpine motorized screen and a second CD multi-changer.

This now jus left the task of installation, a job that would cost me thousands of pounds and take four years to complete.

In the next installment I will explain the sound system in more detail and what preparations need to be carried out before a piece of MDF went any ware near it.