How often, when traveling from point A to an unfamiliar point B, do you make it successfully without one wrong turn? It’s not likely the majority of you will raise your hand and assume the identity of Rand McNally. There aren’t many instances where I interview people and their story doesn’t include some sort of detour, distraction or derailment, but here we are with this purpose-built Audi RS3.
“The RS3 is my third ‘build’, but my first full-on build in the sense that there is no aspect of the car left untouched,” says owner Nick Flom very matter-of-factly. Flom, a 30-year-old cyber security consulting engineer from northern Virginia, has been investing time and money into an automotive habit for the luckier part of thirteen years. “My first car, when I was a senior in high school, was a 2008 Ford Focus SE that I did similar things to,” Nick reminisces. “That car was also gutted, had a bolt-in half cage, [its] battery was relocated to the rear, straight piped exhaust, wheels, coil-overs and a bunch of other suspension modifications to make it handle like it was on rails.” Nick had his first taste of track time with the trusty Ford Focus, albeit parking lot antics via auto-crossing. Still, it was enough experience that clearly stuck with him through the second movement of his motoring concerto.
After finding the law too focused on his juvenile adventures with the Ford, it was released into the wild and replaced with a somewhat tamer Benz SLK230 Kompressor. While it wasn’t as “racey” as Nick puts it, it did benefit from coil-overs, upgraded supercharger pulley and various other performance modifications, the service bills were becoming too much. With a convertible top that wouldn’t
