Steady Creepn

This week officially marks a year of Low Company being in existence and as an automotive enthusiast it’s been a year I’ll never forget, we’ve done everything from travelling to other cities for shows, to hosting our very own automotive limbo event and of course, sitting up editing 'til the early hours of the morning. It’s also been a year in which we’ve learnt a lot, both as car enthusiasts and amateur photographers, and along the way we’ve met lots of amazing people, people who’ve become friends, people who love these man made chunks of metal, rubber and plastics, as much as we do.

2013 was also the year in which the car scene really came alive in South Africa, in particular the stance scene. The number of builds that can hold their own on an international level has more than doubled as well as the amount of shows and meets, figures that are sure to increase as we head into 2014, with that said it’s an exciting time to be someone who is passionate about all things automotive.

One of the cars that really stood out in the past year has been that of Johnathan Barnes, a simple 9n3 Polo which he’s managed to transform into something far beyond its rather plain factory guise. This car has been somewhat of an elusive one for us, before we met Johnathan it was simply known as “that Polo from East London”, the 1^st time I saw it parked at a local petrol station I immediately got on my phone and sent a message in our group telling the crew of the ridiculously low 9n3 I’d just seen. But as quickly as it popped up it disappeared again, only to make an appearance a few months later at a local meet and go back into hiding.

By this time the only information we had gathered on the Polo was that it was from East London and that it was part of the Street Candy crew, so when we took a trip to East London in September of 2013, we knew we had to be on the lookout for this car. To our surprise the car was at the Strictly Street event and sitting even lower than before, needless to say we made the necessary introductions and planned to do a shoot right then and there, but as we all know, plans have a nasty habit of not working out from time to time, and we left East London with only a number and a promise for a feature shoot in December. In hindsight this was one of the best things that could have happened, not only have we gained a friend through the following months of messaging back and forth but also, I can’t think of a better car to mark our 1 year anniversary.

Johnathan’s journey with his polo started about 2 years ago when he popped over to their local grocer for some bread and came home to a surprise of a bone stock silver VW hatchback parked in his garage, the car turned out to be a gift for his 21^st birthday. Being passionate about cars and preferring to stand out rather than blend in, he made his first modification in the form of a large tilt-and-slide sunroof from Webasto, a simple addition which turned out to be the starting point for more radical changes.

Johnathan proceeded to do a grille black out, and added a set JOM coilovers. Wanting to stand out a bit more he painted his standard daily wheels in a ‘hot’ pink and left it at that for a while. Street Candy’s first meet came around a few months later and in order to keep things fresh, a set of HRE 501 replicas, 17x7.5j (+28 offset) in front and 17x8j (+30 offset) in the rear wrapped in Nankang 185/35/17, were purchased.

Being part of Street Candy requires a certain amount a crazy, so when Johnathan entered the Show and Shine event in September this meant that he had to step his game up a level and he did this by firstly painting his wheels in a custom metallic blue and proceeding to add the blue touches around the car and engine bay, the next step was to go lower, and this was achieved by c-notching the chassis, removing the helpers and compressing the coilover springs a further 40mm, and adding camber plates in the rear to allow the rear wheels to clear the fenders.

The result of all this is one that constantly has you saying, “damn” but in a good way, because no matter how many times you see it you still can’t get over how well the modifications work together. Naturally it took the best of show at the event and months later it still has the same impact it did when we first saw it, what makes this even more impressive is that the car was raised for the shoot so that we could get around town easier, so Johnathan always has the option of shocking everyone when the need arises.

I think cars like these are only the beginning of what’s to come this year and we as Lowco will be doing our bit to showcase them to the best of our abilities. Here’s to Johnathan’s Polo and to a scraping 2014!