It’s a good thing that Bobby Nitro recorded his interview with Granger Nieuwoudt and his Seat station wagon of sound because after experiencing the sheer volume of those decibels after the chat, it literally shook Bobby’s thoughts right out of his head.
A family man from Rondevlei, Granger owns the only Seat Vario Cordoba in the country, a 2001 model.
He says: “There were two but after the other one was accident damaged, I tried to buy it for spares. As you can imagine, there are none available so I have to make things work off other vehicles.”
The headlights, for instance, are home brewed. Instead of the R12k for imports, he used universal spots and made up the backings with Perspex, heat and bodyfiller.
Granger explains how he started off by building a strong shell inside the car of triple-laminated 80mm supawood, filling the entire back area and serving to push the sound pressure forward.
There are two chambers in the box, with the front of the woofers firing into a sealed section, which he tells Bobby is called a fourth order band pass enclosure.
Granger says: “The advantages are that it creates a safer environment for the woofers, as resonance is generated from two chambers working together, so the woofers themselves don’t have to work too hard.
“The only things that can break now are the windscreen and door locks.
“We used thousands of screws to make the enclosure, me and my buddy sitting inside the car with the doors closed so as to not wake my wife, with us getting thick with dust.”
Granger has removed everything that is not necessary, to make the car practical and competitive, and it may well be one of the loudest.
He adds: “I am walking a path with my car, and I believe I am still climbing. There is a lot more potential yet to be unlocked.”
His philosophy, in short, is never show your full hand at once.
Bobby had to ask Granger how he learned all of this deep technical know-how.
He explains: “Research man, which is where I got the idea to use lightweight lithium batteries. For a setup like mine I need to pack 10 by 200 amp power batteries, and that would come to over half a ton, whereby my lithium is a tenth of that weight and pushing the same power.”
Unusually, he has installed an odd number of woofers at five 15-inchers, making the ohmage and wiring that much more complicated.
Granger says he plays in the middleweight class as an underdog because, firstly he likes to be odd and secondly, most in this class use six woofers.
He says: “I used to have a Microbus when I was younger, built my own box and used to break stuff left, right and centre. The secret I learned comes with the tuning, the size of the enclosure. I’ve walked a road with audio and nowadays, I’ve linked up with a guy in Italy – a sound scientist of sorts – who has helped with the design of my enclosure after I supplied all the details, which I built to spec.”
Granger and the club he belongs to, Team Deadly 0.25, are happy to participate in charity outreach, supporting a children’s home in Belgravia.
He also likes to help and mentor other sound guys.
Granger concludes: “On Sundays we do a testing session with my laptop and Db meter at the mall, to encourage the guys to come and test, and we talk about advice and how to work with what you got. For me, I’m happy to give back with any knowledge I have.”