THE ANSWER
IS NEVER ONE
Three cars. Three purposes.
One obsession.
By Jake Gruijters
Contributor, THE SHIFT
A stranger once handed me the keys before I’d paid for the car.
We’d met that evening. He’d kept a 1991 Golf Mk2 in his garage for years, couldn’t get it back on the road, and didn’t have the resources.
I’d found the listing, made the call, driven out to see it.
We talked for a while. About the car. About what it was. About what it could be.
Then he said: transfers only happen during the day. Take it home tonight.
No contract. No payment. Just keys.
He’d read me correctly and I understood exactly what that meant.
Some people speak the language. Most don’t.
It Started Through Glass
Being half Dutch and half English, we regularly drove to the UK when I was a kid.
My brother and I could only look out the window.
Different country, different car culture. More interesting cars on the road, driven by people who chose them deliberately.
Something registered early.
Cars were never just transport. They were decisions. Expressions. A language spoken without words.
Portugal, the UK, the Netherlands.
Different roads, same obsession.
Seven Years,
Three Hundred Cars a Weekend
Before I had the cars I wanted, I drove everyone else’s. Seven years working car events.
New model launches. Private drives. Valet for the most valuable guests, and the most valuable cars.
Three hundred cars in a weekend sometimes.
Other times, a classic VW bus as suitable transportation for guests at a wedding.
Lamborghini Huracáns returning to their owners after annual inspections.
Ferrari 458s. Porsche 911 GT3s. Cars that existed in magazines and then suddenly existed under my hands.
You learn something driving other people’s cars.
You learn what’s real and what’s theatre. What feels alive and what just performs aliveness.
Which cars reward the driver, and which ones merely impress the passenger.
That education doesn’t come from reading.
_edited.jpg)
Driving the Bentley
Three Cars.
Three Versions of the Same Person.
Someone asks your favourite car. You pause.
Not because you don’t know, but because the question is wrong.
A favourite car is not a car. It’s a version of yourself.
The self that moves through the world daily.
The self that wants to feel something on a Sunday morning.
The self that stays up too late with reference photos of a dream, and a vision that hasn’t become a build.
One car can’t hold all of that.
You need at least three.
The Daily
AMG GT 4-Door
I drove one before I wanted one.
That’s the difference between reading a spec sheet and understanding a car. Behind the wheel of someone else’s, on someone else’s schedule, you find out quickly whether it’s real.
It’s real, and there’s just something about that sound an AMG produces.
The 4-Door works because it refuses to compromise in either direction.
It’s not a sports car pretending to be practical. It’s not a practical car pretending to have a soul.
It’s both.
Manufaktur Moss Green. Metallic wheels.
The kind of car that gets noticed by someone who knows their AMG options.
Invisible to everyone else. That’s the only filter that matters.
The Daily
The Weekend
1985 Porsche 911 Targa
There are faster 911s. More valuable ones. More celebrated ones. The 1985 3.2 Targa doesn’t care.
It’s the last of a particular honesty.
Air-cooled, analogue, entirely without agenda.
Before Porsche began refining the experience into something smoother and further from its origins.
This one still asks something of the driver.
The Targa over the coupé is a deliberate choice. Not the convertible drama. Not the coupé’s focused intent.
Something in between, open air, unhurried, a Sunday morning car that earns its place through feel rather than spec.
Grey. Black Fuchs-style wheels. Reworked by Singer.
You don’t drive it to arrive somewhere. You drive it because the drive itself is the point.
The Weekender
The Dream
Golf MK2
My current Mk2 was a birthday present. To myself.
Always garage-kept, I bought it from the second owner, who had it for four years and drove it only 2,500 kilometres in total.
When someone keeps a car like that, barely drives it, just maintains it, just preserves it, they’re not neglecting it.
They’re protecting something they understand has value beyond transport.
He needed to let it go and I needed to buy it from him.
Navy blue. Dotz badge. Collector condition. Original throughout.
The previous owner had rear seatbelts installed to keep up with modern-day safety standards.
The rear seat looks like no one has ever sat there.
The Dream
I’ve Owned other MK2s
One I bought from an enthusiast who couldn’t afford to get it roadworthy.
I took it home the night we met, before ownership had transferred, because he trusted what he saw.
Fixed it. Learned it. Sold it when it was right.
It gave me mobility in Portugal, including the drive to the racing circuit in Estoril.
I’d often forget to switch the lights off, but it always made for a good shot.
Then there was another Mk2 I spotted undervalued. The owner couldn’t see what it was, but I could.
Bought it, sorted it, sold it for double within weeks.
The Mk2s keep coming back and this was the third.
Admittedly, I sold it too quickly. Before I had played around enough with the carburettor to find out how to optimise the fuel-air mixture and remove the engine hesitation between three and four thousand rpm.
I still find myself thinking about this on long walks or while I’m taking a shower.
The Build That Hasn’t Happened Yet
Singer took the 911 and asked one question.
Not: How do we modernise this?
Not: How do we make it faster?
But: what was Porsche originally trying to achieve, and what would that look like if someone pursued it without compromise, without budget, without deadline?
The answer became one of the most obsessively detailed approaches to the automotive restomod.
Kimera followed a similar philosophy with Lancia. Take the rally DNA, the heritage, the soul, and rebuild it with modern precision while keeping everything analogue that deserves to stay analogue.
Nobody has done this to a Mk2 Golf. Not properly. Not at that level of intention.
The silhouette is timeless. The GTI heritage is real. Group A rallying, hot-hatch culture, a generation who learned what driving meant behind that wheel. The bones are honest. The story is there.
A Mk2 treated with that philosophy, obsessively re-engineered, modernised where it matters, untouched where it doesn’t, could become one of the most compelling restomods ever built.
That build hasn’t started yet.
Not really.
But the best projects begin as convictions long before they become builds.
The Answer is Never One
Three cars. Three purposes. One colour language.
Dark greens. Deep blues. Muted, understated. Nothing that performs for the room.
The AMG is noticed by someone who knows their options.
The Targa by someone who knows their air-cooled years.
The Mk2 by someone who just stopped walking without knowing why.
That’s the filter.
Noticed by someone who knows.
Invisible to everyone else.
The stranger who handed me the keys before I’d paid understood that instinctively.
Some people speak the language.
Most don’t.
