photographer: Henry Z. DeKuyper
"Everywhere I go people are always asking about my car," says Christine Duran of her '03 Jetta. "Since it doesn't look like all the other VW wagons, they want to know about the audio. So naturally I am more than obliged to show it off." There's a lot to flash around both inside the cabin and under the hood as Duran had multiple goals with the wagon.
One goal was a sound system, as car audio had been part of her life since high school. "My boyfriends all had loud systems," she divulges. The twist was that she didn't want the equipment to compromise the cargo room of her daily driver. Her other aim had to do with how hard the biodiesel-compatible engine, rather than the midbass, punched it. "I like a challenge," Duran relates. "I had a vision of a green performance vehicle and my hubby helped me execute it."
Conveniently for Duran, her husband, Chris Fierek, happened to work for mobile manufacturer Directed Electronics and have extensive background in customizing cars. Pulling together a team of Brian Brady, David Parhat, Bryan Sones, Derek Dawson, and Chad Utt, Fierek gently descended on the stock interior. "Our goal was to build a complete audio system without losing an inch of space in the cargo area," Fierek explains. "To make things even more challenging, not one panel was cut or modified to accommodate the install." Here's how the build went down.