Well, bags are for groceries...

How many times have we heard someone buy a euro and claim that it’s just a daily and it’ll “stay stock?” If I had a nickel for every time I heard that… I’d be five cents richer right now, because that’s exactly what Jose Chong said about his 2008 Passat Wagon. When he purchased in the car in 2008, it was for the spacious interior: plenty of room for the dog, shopping and, uh, bags of groceries. Jose must have some pretty impressive self-control, because the wagon stayed as it was until 2010. Finally, the temptation was too much and the fun began.

Jose set himself up for success by getting the license plate: “Stanced.” But it took awhile before the car matched the plate. He acquired multiple sets of wheels before ever putting a set on the car. The mods kept coming during that time though, however, they were mostly small projects – as a daily, she couldn’t be off the road for long. But he’d been bitten by the modding “bug.”

Today, this B6 has come a long way. It started out on coils, but we all know how bad roads on the East Coast are… so today, the bags are keeping her low and slow rather than holding the groceries. In fact, Jose is now running Bagyard Bombers all the way around with 2 3-gallon tanks, 2 Vair 444 compressors, with brass fittings and Accuair management, installed by the boys over at Open Road Tuning.

It’s clear that Jose already had some commitment issues finding the perfect set of wheels, and he almost let the perfect set slip through his fingers, at one point even having them up for sale. Thanks to some words of encouragement from the VW community, they stayed. It took some grinding down, and lots of test fits before they were finally able to tuck, but now the OZ Monoblock Fittipaldi’s (18x8.5) are happily on the car, and I’m certain Jose couldn’t be happier with his choice.

Some of the other smaller mods that Jose did in the past few years include, on the outside: complete, color matched Votex kit, badgeless grille, smoked Euro tails and euro tag. The interior has lots of euro goodies: cup holder, light switch, switches for mirrors and windows. There’s also a Valentine 1 radar detector, just in case someone’s trying to make their ticket quota for the month, an R36 steering wheel, PODI gauge mount with Dakota Odyssey II PSI gauge and Valentine 1 remote display. This Stage 1 beast also has a RNS-510 head-unit with Alpine sub and speakers. Phew.

And to top it all off… Jose’s hinted to us that he has some other things in the works. I can’t wait to see what is in store next. It’s clear that he’s taken this wagon from his daily errand runner to a showstopper so I can’t even imagine what’s in store, but it’s guaranteed to be good.