It's easy to get caught up in all the amazing custom cars and trucks on display at the 2023 SEMA show. It's almost to the point it's easy to tune out all the stuff not on display this year. You know, custom vehicles that real people actually drive, not just get built to tour a couple of auto shows and spend the rest of their lives in a warehouse. That's why we'd like to shout out Agron Coma's Audi RS3-swapped Mk 7 Golf R. It's the kind of custom job you don't often see in North America.
This particular Golf R is a member of Volkswagen's Spektrum program. Introduced for the 2019 model year in the U.S. and 2018 for Canada, the program allowed the Golf R to leave its factory with one of 40 unique and quirky paint jobs. Often, these paint colors pay homage to iconic VWs of years long passed, hence why Agron Coma's Golf R sports a striking purple color quite unlike almost anything else on the road. It'd be one thing if this Golf R was all bark and no bite under the hood. Thankfully, Agron knew what to do with it before he even bought the thing.
That's because waiting in his garage for his Golf to arrive sat a wrecked Audi RS3, its turbocharged 2.5-liter, inline-five cylinder engine undamaged from a prior accident. Though the swap had been done a few times before in Europe, particularly in Germany and Finland, doing the same over in the U.S. without the aid of any wiring manuals or OEM diagnostic tools was easier said than done. Regardless, Agron spent nearly every Sunday off from his full-time job removing the Golf R's stock two-liter turbo four-pot and slowly but surely piecing the new Audi engine into its new permanent home.
Though both cars shared roughly the same chassis, proceedings were nothing like a plug-and-play, bolt-on kind of job. Then again, engine swaps are never that easy in practice, only ever in theory. With only online forums and his own two hands able to guide him through the painstaking build, Agron almost gave up on the project altogether when that little devil, the wiring harness, had to be installed. Without the highly classified and manufacturer-specific tuning equipment native to modern VW dealers, it seemed that the build could be indefinitely put on hold while Agron struggled to find a solution.
But hey ho and happy days, Agron eventually got everything sorted, and the results are nothing short of spectacular. It's the kind of work the lads at SEMA with their million-dollar budgets should look at and appreciate. It turns out you don't need a team of engineers to make a SEMA-quality custom car. Just a little bit of money and more patience than most saints. Check out the video below if you want Agron to explain more.
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