One car subculture that announces its presence with sheer volume in Cape Town is the audio enthusiasts.
Take Granger Nieuwoudt and his Seat Vario Cordoba, the only car of its kind in the country. Experiencing the force of his sound system is a full body experience; you can literally feel your skin vibrating while your hair gets blown in every direction by those blasting decibels. It’s alarming.
Granger, a family man from Rondevlei, says about the rare 2001 car: “Initially there were two in South Africa but after the other was wrecked, I tried to buy it for spares. Parts are impossible to find, so I make do with alternatives.”
Produced between 1996 and 2002, the Seat Vario Cordoba is a rare station wagon variant of the Seat Cordoba, itself a sedan derivative of the popular Ibiza hatchback. Built on the Volkswagen Group A03 platform, it shares mechanical components with models like the Polo and Golf, making it an uncommon yet oddly versatile choice.
Sourcing parts for such a niche model today is a mission, requiring ingenuity and custom solutions— something Granger has applied himself to. Take the headlights for instance: instead of paying R12k for imports, he crafted his own using universal spots, Perspex, heat, and body filler.
But it’s the audio gear inside his car that takes centre stage. Granger built a reinforced shell of triple-laminated 80mm Supawood, filling the entire back of the car and serving to push sound pressure forward. His custom enclosure is known as a fourth-order band pass system, where woofers fire into a sealed chamber, reducing stress on the speakers while amplifying output. “The only things that can break now are the windscreen and door locks,” he jokes.
As always, project builders like Granger will have war stories of the insane efforts they went to. Granger tells of how he and a friend assembled the enclosure in near silence, using thousands of screws while sealed inside the car. The idea was to not to wake his wife with his late night project build.
To keep the build practical and competitive, Granger removed all non-essentials, not that there is much space in the car for anything else. His philosophy in the competitive sound-off scene is to never reveal your full hand, and to keep improving.
Asked how he gained such deep technical knowledge, Granger replies: “Research, that’s how I learned about lightweight lithium batteries. A setup like mine would otherwise need ten 200-amp lead-acid batteries and that’s way impractical weighing in at over half a ton of battery. But lithium cuts that weight to a tenth while delivering the same power.”
Lithium batteries are a game-changer in car audio, particularly for high-current applications. Unlike traditional lead-acid batteries, which degrade with deep cycling, lithium iron phosphate offer higher energy density, faster charge rates, and a longer lifespan — up to ten times more cycles. They also maintain a steadier voltage under load, critical for keeping amplifiers operating efficiently. “With lithium, I get more power output with less weight, meaning less strain on the suspension and better vehicle balance,” Granger adds.
He even defies convention with his speaker setup, running five 15-inch woofers instead of the usual six, which does of course make wiring and ohmage more complex
Getting here has not been a smooth path. He recalls: “I started with a Microbus back in the day, built my own box, and broke stuff left, right, and centre. The real secret is tuning—getting the enclosure size right. Now, I work with a guy in Italy — a real sound scientist — who helped fine-tune my design.”
Beyond entering competitions, Granger and his club, Team Deadly 0.25, support a children’s home in Belgravia. He also mentors aspiring audio enthusiasts.