Hot rod and rock show, Tampere, Finland

The Race Taxi is on it's second day on the Car Show in Tampere. The show has gone well and people have been very interested in our car.

Transport combination. It was a bit tricky to drive because I couldn't get enough weight to the front.

The nights were spent in the Multivan in front of a local VW builders garage. The rock and roll rear seat was very comfortable to sleep on.

The Race Taxi was on display on radalle.com's stand. They had gotten everything in order during friday night, all I had to do was to move the "fencing" behind the race taxi so people could take a closer look at our car.

Our car from a different view.

The most important info...

After the show begins the finishing of the car, so we can finally get to drive it.

American Car Show 2008, Helsinki, Finland

The first day is over, and the first day went really well. The race taxi was well accepted by the public and many were exited to see such a special purpose for a VW van.



The day before the car show. Building the show booth.



Some of you may notice the transformation of the Porsche. Mika spent 8 hours making the graphics on it.

Race taxi almost ready for car show

There has been some progress during the last days, and the race taxi is almost in shape to be officially shown for public. Some vinyl graphics are still missing as are a couple interior panels, but we should get them sorted out tomorrow.

Making the roof interior.

Fresh from the vinyl cutter.

The rear bumper and grille between rear lights installed.

The Race taxi yesterday, waiting to go to Helsinki for polishing.

Ready to go. The Race Taxi is 2cm too wide for the trailer, so it's a quite tight fit at the trailer rear lights.

We found a Vanagon badge from our stash of T3 Transporter parts. The vanagon badge is a bit exotic over here, because these are usually Transporters or Caravelles. Actually this car was sold as a "BUS", so it had a "BUS" badge at the rear.

The laws about modifying cars are quite strict in Finland, but so are laws about towing trailers. This combination looks very suspect...

In this pic you can also see the South Africa lower grille. Looks good!

The Race Taxi polished and waiting to go to the Car show. The paint started running in many places when the car was painted. The lighting in our garage isn't very good for painting, and it's even worse when painting light colors. Black is much easier to paint.

Hopefully this will be sorted soon when we get a painting booth near the garage.

The car got a taxi sign

Seems like only two pictures have been taken the last couple days. We have been so busy making the car that we haven't had the time to photograph it.

We got the polycarbonate windows done, so it was time ton install the windshield. With one of our last cars we were really unfortunate, we tried to install the windshield three times, and kept breaking it (not the installers fault, the window frame was probably bent or something like that), so we weren't really looking forward to this job A windshield in good condition was a real find, or so we thought. When finally getting the windshield in place, we noticed that it read "Securit" on it... For safety reasons you can use only laminated windshields in racing, so I guess we'll have to find a new one.

The rear seats are installed, and at the moment we're making the interior at full speed.



The race taxi has to have a taxi sign. The sign is the same as the official taxi's use in Finland. Seems like near the airport, the finnish "taksi" text is often replaced by the international "taxi".

The paint has dried, time to work

Oops, seems like I forgot to press the post button when I made the last update this sunday. It's corrected now, hopefully the frequent readers will enjoy a double dose of our car.

The paint had finally dried so se began finishing the car for the car show. Just one weeks left, yikes!



As front lights you just have to have darkened lights with angel eyes. The front is still waiting for the South African lower grille.



This picture was meant to show how low the car looks with the front spoiler installed. You can barely see the front spoiler when you look very closely...



The roof was painted black with a roller to get a vinyl look. You can also see the just installed polycarbonate windows.



Luxury model rear light trim combined with blackened rear lights. The "service" hole in the back is well covered up and there's a nice room for the licence plate between the lights.