‘ I started off by restoring a Beetle in my parents’ garage at 15, and that was how I learned a lot of my basics’
Specialist: Retro Resus
Tom Walker set up Retro Resus – a highperformance and racecar garage that mostly specialises in Volkswagen Group cars based in Somerset – just over 10 years ago. His connection with Volkswagens, and their nitty-gritty mechanical parts, goes back much further, though, to his childhood.‘ I started off by restoring a Beetle in my parents’ garage at 15, and that was how I learned a lot of my basics. I stripped it down to a bare chassis and put floor panels in it. I restored the chassis and did a lot of body work. And then didn’ t finish it …’
But that wasn’ t the end of his connection with VW, or the Volkswagen group.‘ For my work experience through school, I did one week at a Seat dealership in Yeovil, and I did one week at a Volkswagen specialist that was doing tuning work. I got an apprenticeship at Seat when I left school, and I was there about six months, before the tuning garage that I worked for on the work experience phoned me up and said,“ We’ re looking for an apprentice, do you want to do it?” And I went,“ Yes”. I initially went to work for Tim Stiles from TSR; he was the original guru. I worked for that company, and its different owners, for a lot of years.’
Tom wanted his own outfit to be different from other local VW garages.‘ Originally, hence the name, we set out to do Mk1 and Mk2 Golfs because I didn’ t want any competition from other tuners that were around. I was particularly well known for doing engine conversions on them, putting in 20-valve engines. I did loads and loads of those; I’ ve done R32s into them too. I said,“ Well, that’ s kind of a bit of a niche market for me.”’
Inevitably, things evolved.‘ All the more modern stuff followed me. Customers that I’ ve dealt with over the years followed me, and we’ ve ended up doing a wide range of stuff. If you look at my workshop now, I’ ve got two Mk1 Golfs, I’ ve got a Corrado, I’ ve got a Mk6 Golf in there, I’ ve got an Audi RS7 … we drive a Mk 7 Golf Club Sport.’
Such variety isn’ t easy, but it helps keep Tom and his team active and busy.‘ It does give your brain a workout, you’ re trying to keep up with all the modern stuff and get all the equipment for that, and you’ re still doing the old stuff. But that’ s how we’ ve ended up where we are. My wife and I own and run the company. There are eight of us in total now. We do everything from building engines and gearboxes in-house. For ECUs, we tune them. We’ ve got a nice dyno cell. We do 90 % of the stuff in-house, but we don’ t do body work, we don’ t do MOTs and we outsource our actual physical engine machining, but pretty much everything else we do in-house.’
The same attitude is applied to VR6s.‘ We do service, maintenance and repairs on standard ones. And we will do standard rebuilds, but the majority of performance enthusiasts would be contacting us for turbocharging.’
Retro Resus began by swapping more modern VW engines into classic Golfs, but has evolved to include more modern cars
‘ I started off by restoring a Beetle in my parents’ garage at 15, and that was how I learned a lot of my basics’
Summer 2026 The Engine Rebuilder 27