The snowball effect is a universal concept in which things grow bigger over time. In many ways, it can be an identical template for modifying your ride. You start small, maybe add a sticker to the rear window. Next thing you’re thumbing through Tire Rack for the cheapest summer wheel setup you can plunk on your Visa. Regardless of the hill it’s rolling down, the fluffy white ball of snow looks different for everyone.

The former Candy White 2011 GTI you see before you started the same way. It was a calculated purchase after a serious search. The payoff for the time invested in making sure a solid candidate was secured was a four-year-old two-door with 130k on the clock. For the kid who grew up playing with toy cars and digitally driving them in Need For Speed, it was perfect.

“I’ve pretty much always been a VW guy,” Steven Nadaskai tells us. “From always picking VWs in video games as a kid, to creating my first email address at 12 years old which has ‘VWGTI’ in it, to the dream of owning a VW GTI as my first car.” The 26-year-old Mission Viejo, California resident’s family also played a role in shaping his influences. His father had a few 90s Audis and that, combined with his European heritage, helped guide Steven towards Volkswagens. “I even had the dream since I was six or seven to be a car builder and ‘fix’ up cars as my dream job,” he admits.

It’s uncommon when conversing with an owner that there isn’t some sort of vehicular history to wade through. But with Steven, this Mk6 was his first car. He began looking when he was 14 or 15, but it wasn’t until he was 17 and ready for some wheels that the search lead him to a Candy White, 1-owner example. “[My father and I] looked at lower mileage MK5s, some Mk4s and even a Mk1 Caddy, but somehow found a completely stock 2011 VW GTI.”

As with any teenage auto enthusiast with a brand new blank canvas, things weren’t going to remain as Wolfsburg wished for long. Simple modifications were made, such as swapping out the taillights and replacing the exhaust. But Steven had much grander plans for his new-to-him Mk6. From there, he followed the logical next step of suspension before wheels, combined with doing it once, doing it right. “About eight months into having the car, I bought an air suspension setup and installed it on my driveway.”

“I simply learned as I went,” Steven tells us. His work ethic and his hands-on approach can be attributed to his father and their teamwork DIY attitude. “Initially, it was doing all things with my dad. He was always there helping and we would figure it out and he would teach me. From the exhaust, to brake jobs, and even to helping with the air suspension.”

Despite his willingness to help his son, he didn’t understand things such as the need for air suspension. When Steven told him he was going to notch the frame for proper axle fitment when fully aired out, his father dropped the R word we all just love to hear. Ruin. He must have foreshadowed a few moves ahead, because Steven had already mentally planned to cut the car up in order to fit a wide body kit. He wasn’t yet on board with modifying the car in an irreversible way, and requested Steven not do anything until the car was paid off. I mean, we guess he had a point…

“Over the next year or so, I began to do more and more to the car from wheels, to custom front end bits, some performance add-ons, etc.” At this point, Steven started bringing out his GTI to sanctioned car shows, not just the local scene meets. But he really wanted to widen his approach to transforming his hot hatch. Literally. “I had a specific fender flare kit in mind but the company went out of business unfortunately.” Another option was explored and mounted, but his initial intentions were not satiated. Regardless, the title for the car was now in his name and it was about to get quite the makeover.

In early 2018, Steven unveiled what he dubbed the V2 setup. The car was now much wider than stock, requiring the irreversible cutting of the fenders and quarter panels to fit. It was wrapped in metallic aqua blue and rolled on some custom 3-piece Rotiforms. He was 19 years old at this point and still daily driving it. “The V2 setup wasn’t long lived, but it made a big impact,” recalls Steven. “I met a lot of people through this version and a lot of people also followed along the build journey at this time, too. I was building as I went, like adding a roll cage, seats, and more. But I already had a vision for a new version. Not even a year into the V2 setup, I tore it down and began the V3 setup.”

With V3, Steven’s MK6 would be relieved of its daily driven status. The wheels were rebuilt wider, the camber more negative, the aero more, err, aerodynamic. It was rewrapped in white to mark the latest evolution. This is the first time he took the car out on track, too, fulfilling the whole performance VW thing. “I tracked it at Streets of Willow,” he says, recalling the fun he had. “This was a very cool experience as I built another set of wheels for a track setup. Meaty tyres, and then alignment setup with no camber.” While this was a one and done affair, it won’t be the only on track action the Mk6 will have.

We’re coming upon what’s known as a turning point. “The V3 setup was revealed not long into 2019 and it made a splash,” Steven tells us. “I took it to one show in particular that changed the direction of my life. It was a Formula Drift event in Long Beach and they had a car show area. Within it, a SEMA Battle of the Builders Young Gun Qualifier event was held. I decided to enter and attend just for the fun of it. I didn’t know much about SEMA other than it being a big car show in Vegas that has cool cars.”

Despite not being familiar with the Speciality Equipment Market Association, Steven won and was presented a Golden Ticket to SEMA. His GTI was going to compete in Las Vegas, all-expenses paid, against the best of the best for the Young Guns category. “This was surreal to me and an opportunity that I couldn’t believe.” In the months leading up to deadline, the car wasn’t so much as disassembled, but rather was freshened. The flares were removed and reworked, the lights swapped out, the seats replaced with Status racing buckets with a matching steering wheel. Despite the effort, Steven just missed out on the Top 10 spot. It was a humbling experience for him. “The week of SEMA was a blur. I had met so many people and most importantly, I got to see this whole new world related to cars and that’s the actual industry side of cars.”

For two years, the GTI’s progress flatlined while Steven focused on other things, primarily committing himself to working for a custom automotive shop. But the sweet siren call of change was too hard to resist. He found a new job that was less taxing and in mid 2021, his spare time was once again spent dismantling the car. The most outrageous phase of ‘Not Wide’ was about to begin.

“This new version of the GTI was a culmination of things I wanted to do to the cars for years. These things included creating my own wide body kit for it, swapping in a 2.5L 5-cylinder turbo setup, and creating a functional but form fitting race/track car out of it.”

Stephen started by laying down a healthy layer of spray foam to the passenger side, the California palm trees supervising the process as they swayed overhead. Little by little his vision was taking shape as can after can was emptied and applied. “I knew with the body kit design it needed to be different. Something that incorporated all the styles I like, but also a functional yet stylish look.”

Once all the foam had been laid, he donned his best High Renaissance attire and went full Michelangelo on it. By using a jagged knife to cut away the bigger parts, followed by a cheese grater type tool and your basic 80 grit sandpaper, Stephenangelo sculpted what he termed a blob of popcorn into a cohesive design. Like Bob Ross painting happy little trees, Stephen applied the body filler from his paper plate palette, time lapse videos capturing it all in captivating quickness. “This was the time consuming aspect, as it was [a routine of] sanding, adding more, sanding, adding more.”

In the following months, he worked diligently on the car, making sure to take appropriate breaks as to not be overwhelmed and roll it in the ocean. He documented his crusade against the ordinary on socials, creating a digital diary that could be referenced and read by any of his online disciples.

“I wanted a design that flowed well with the body and made it look like it was a part of the car,” he explains. “Like if VW themselves made a Mk6 Wide Body Concept Car.” Once he was satisfied with everything, it was time to have it 3D scanned in order to perfectly replicate it on the driver’s side. Initially, it was going to be a one-off, handmade kit. But at some point Stephen decided he was going to create a company to market it for any willing buyers. In his words, he was filling a void for fellow Mk6 owners. Therefore he needed to utilise technology in order to offer a high quality product. Additionally, he made the decision on a motor swap and custom interior before a public premiere on the SEMA stage in 2022.

Once the kit was scanned, it was able to be virtually manipulated in CAD to make line work and surfacing adjustments, among other things that needed to be changed. A common question tossed his way was why the kit wasn’t just designed on a computer initially? The dirt under the fingernails direction “allowed me to truly see the perspective I wanted and model design cues and the overall body language how I wanted in real time and a 1:1 perspective.”

It was summer of 2022 and in order to increase the focus on achieving that November SEMA goal, Stephen had quit his job. Besides the car, he was also building a brand to bring the kit to market. “This didn’t work so well in my favour as I still had not figured out the way to bring the prototype kit from CAD to reality, the interior was still gutted and so much to do, and nothing done regarding the motor swap. It was just too close of a call to try to have it done before SEMA 2022.” Conceding defeat to a ’22 debut also took a toll on his mental health for a bit, something that he’s a big advocate for.

In earlier versions of the car, there was a message on the rear bumper that reminded people to “prevent sadness, inspire happiness.” It’s now embroidered on his Status seats. “I’ve always been one with a good bit of empathy and truly caring for others,” he tells us. The phrase originated from his earlier social presence posting positive messages, both as a reminder to himself and a boost for anyone else reading. Sort of a warm embrace to pull you from the darkness. “This was in hope of making a small impact on someone else’s day.” The message turned into a brand, TYPCL, which lead to merch. A portion of all sales proceeds are donated to mental health non-profits.

Bouncing back into 2023, Stephen was determined to complete the body kit and had already made strides to move it along. After a year and a half doing work in his parents’ driveway, the Mk6 was relocated to a proper space. “I partnered with Roy from Dirtywerke,” Stephen tells us, “who was a friend and previous boss of mine. He allowed me to bring the GTI to his new shop and have a spot there to work on it.”

“Over the next nine months I was in for the wildest, most stressful, exhausting, work-filled time of my life.” Although his days no longer consisted of Bondo and sanding, it didn’t mean the manual labor came to a halt. “I took it down to a completely bare chassis. From removing hundreds of spot welds and unnecessary brackets or plates, to shaving and cleaning up a ton of areas on the chassis itself,” he told us.

Stephen lends inspiration for a lot of things to Volkswagen’s Mk8 TCR prototype he saw at Hoonigan HQ. He fanboyed all over it, taking pictures, sitting in it, even taking measurements of things. A lot of the race car tricks can be attributed to it.

Back to his not yet race car. The motor was removed and the endless grind of the bay slowly worked its way into the interior. “I was planning to create the ultimate track car and went all out with the vision of it. Full FIA/NASA spec cage structure, standalone ECU and power management, fuel cell, fully custom seating position with a pedal box and custom steering column, air jacks, you name it…” When he was done shaving the bay, including removing the rain tray, and stripping the interior to mimic an early assembly line look, he turned his angle grinder to the trunk and cut out the spare wheel well completely. Back in the interior, seat brackets were removed and all unnecessary spot welds were smoothed down.

A dumpster full of hours were also geared towards planning, research and pitching ideas to sponsors. You see, Stephen wasn’t exactly sitting on a pile of money this entire time. In fact, he was very conscious his bottom line far exceeded his budget. He purchased things used rather than new and was rebuilding wheels instead of replacing them. He was living at home rent free, much like he’s probably still living in many of his followers’ heads, and saving nearly everything he made working. He had banked a decent amount of cash, but it was still a fraction of what the total build cost. That’s where relationships and sponsors come in handy and why it’s so important to be nice to everyone.

As if he didn’t have enough irons in the fire, Stephen launched another company, Alkoto Concepts, and opened pre-orders for the finished kit, which wasn’t yet finished, to attract attention and generate interest. For those inquisitive minds among us, Alkoto is the Hungarian word for creator or created. As with everything, he made sure there was meaning behind the name. The bodykit would finally be realised courtesy of MakeIt’s large format 3D printer. The enormous smile on Stephen’s face when he first held a prototype rear quarter panel was like a first time father holding their newborn.

Once the interior was devoid of everything, Seth from CageKits flew out from Utah and scanned every square inch of the cabin. Afterwards, Caleb created a cage structure and block off panels in CAD, including the door cards negating the need for windows, before the pieces of the puzzle were manufactured. The finished panels and CNC machined tubing were dropped at Blood Motorsport USA for Pierre to work his absolute magic on.

“Given that Pierre has a large amount of experience doing motorsports fabrication, it fit right into what I wanted the GTI to become, a proper specced race car. Pierre wanted to make sure no corners were cut so he TIG welded the entire cage structure.

“On the chassis fabrication side, it wasn’t just the cage. All the interior paneling needed their mounting tabs welded to the cage which took a lot of time and patience. Then there were other things like the air jack mounting cylinders, the shifter/hydro mounting surface, custom steering shaft for steering column, custom pedal box, reservoir bracket, ECU bracket, and plenty more.

“Now the awesome part is that Pierre doesn’t just do chassis fabrication. He’ll do it all which came down to doing all the engine bay fabrication. This included mounting the turbo with custom supports, the exhaust, all the intercooler piping, welding all the Vibrant Performance ends on for the clamps, a custom front bash bar, and more. The vision I had in my head was truly brought to life.”

The motor wasn’t going to be your average 5-cylinder out of a rental-spec Jetta. Intrusion bars from the cage can be seen where the rain tray once existed. A sidewinder turbo mount was fabricated and puts the snail on full view. A Gallardo exhaust manifold was employed and there’s a potato cannon of a hood dump standing at attention above it. Stephen’s pal Pat flew down from NorCal to help assemble the motor parts before it was readied for mounting. His buddy Ryan traveled cross country from New York to create the wiring harness. Along with Roy, the cadre of master class instructors were able to fashion an engine bay worthy of the exterior.

The wide body’s 3D printed panels were fitted and paintwork was completed on the engine bay and the chassis, providing a fresh coat of Candy White goodness. The car was released back to Stephen with just weeks before it was due to debut at SEMA. His friend Derrick Tan was tapped to prep the body for receiving the colour. He put in the hours so Jose from Everlasting Wraps had a perfect surface to lay down the Inozetek Vampire Red vinyl. “I knew I needed something metallic,” Stephen tells us, “given that it would show the design and body lines really well.”

It was really starting to come together. The Woodward Racing steering column was mounted to a crossbar on the cage while the OMP steering wheel is a limited Hoonigan collab. Sitting atop the column is a Haltech iC-7 display. Above the driver, looking like a blank Sudoku board is the Haltech CAN keypad, controlling everything in the car, form turning it on and off, tune settings, lights, etc. The hydro handbrake isn’t only something for a RWD drift car, but can be used to help pitch the car on track, ultimately resulting in more control and cornering ability.

Further inspection of the interior reveals a plexiglass firewall. Safety regulations for NASA, FIA and others require the partition if the fuel cell is within the same area as the driver. Despite having a custom C-pillar filler neck for the fuel cell, the factory door needed to be kept in place as this is the one and only prototype kit and that’s what most customers will be needing.

“Seating position was vital and there are three key points to it. Steering wheel position, pedal position, and seating position. All three are completely changed. Sitting in the car now feels truly like a race car. It’s similar to how it feels sitting in a TCR car. I went an extra step though as I don’t have a dash so everything is exposed.”

To fill those massive arches, which now measure a staggering 4.3” wider per corner, Stephen tapped Rotiform up for the first set of their new KPR forged three-piece wheels in a square 12×18” setup. Behind the wheels sit Porsche Cayenne calipers he snagged off eBay. The wheels were wrapped in steamroller-sized 315/30/R18 Toyo R888R tyres. Toyo was actually a main player in the SEMA surprise.

“Being able to reveal the car on Toyo Treadpass has been a dream since I first went to SEMA in 2019,” expresses Stephen. Stan Chen is the man when it comes to Toyo tyres, and after meeting him after winning the Young Guns event in 2019, he made sure to keep in contact over the years. After initially aiming to appear in 2022, bumping it back a year allowed for a successful pitch to be made to Stan for inclusion on the Treadpass stage. “I was set on that and figured out how to make it possible.”

Another important part of the whole SEMA experience was to have his family out there with him, including his incredibly supportive girlfriend, Logan. For years, his father “silently supported and verbally criticised” the things Stephen did to the GTI. The criticism was tough to hear, but he used that as fuel to keep going. As time went on, with substantial progress being made and more companies joining in to support, the conversations shifted to those of curiosity, rather than critiquing. He even helped towards the end, using his own skills as a machinist to create some custom parts that were necessary. “One thing I’ll always cherish is that I was able to bring my family to SEMA when I revealed the car,” Stephen says. “This was important as I had my mom who has always supported me and also held my ground with my dad’s criticism, too. My little brother who is someone that I’ve inspired and that I’ve gotten into cars. My girlfriend, who is my rock and quite literally kept me mentally sane through all the stress and anxiety of this build. Then my dad who finally saw the finished product and also was able to see a glimpse of the industry through SEMA – my world.”

So, what has Stephen and his GTI been up to since Vegas? The car made the rounds to multiple shows across the country, creating content and getting it in front of as many eyes as possible. He’s got nearly ten orders for his kit and the car is currently disassembled in order for molds to be made. Once it’s wearing a production kit and the preorders fulfilled, the Mk6 will return to the track, competing at events such as GridLife and Time Attack derivatives. He’s also looking at a V5 for SEMA later this year, including added aero and a new livery. There is also talks of a built motor and trans and maybe an AWD conversion. Considering what he’s accomplished before turning 30, nothing is out of his realm of possibility.