About

It all started back in the summer of 1994 in Palm Desert, CA: My father bought a 1985 VW GTI to my mother as a commuter car. After driving such ugly, boring, slow Chevrolet Chevette, a GTI looked like a big change. The car was interesting because it had a Motor Trend 1985 Car of the Year sticker in the rear window. It dialed 120 MPH in the speedometer. With a Red Mars paint color and black trims it looked like a little sprinter. Very sporty. Small and fast, like a rabbit. It was acquired in a car auction with a failure in the radiator fan for $800 USD. Everything else worked. It had AC, no Power Steering, manual windows, sunroof, rear window wiper, and a high compression 1800cc 8 valve engine with Fuel Injection… Pretty much of a spartan car. So sad we don't have pictures of the car from back then. Maybe my brother has one, but it might be from years after, when the car was recovered from a theft. But the car was beautiful. It had all the sport compact car spirit in it. After this first GTI almost every car we have owned in the family has been a Water-cooled VW. Back then I was a kid, but my brother was older so he was more into cars than me. He is the one who started with the idea of putting on a set of custom wheels and an aftermarket sound system to the GTI. He used to buy magazines of customized VWs and started picking ideas from there. Then I got more involved in the VW World as I grew up. All the cars I have owned are VW brand. I bet those who are VW fans have owned at least three of them. I have owned five so far.

The Waterpumpers blog is based in Mexicali, Baja, Mexico (recently moved to Savannah, GA, USA) and it's aimed to show the passion to the Water-cooled Volkswagen cars, that includes everything from Golfs, Jettas, Sciroccos, Passats, Boras, Polos, Beetles, Corrados and so on, but also for other European cars of the like of Audi, SEAT, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, MINI, Ferrari among others. In general directed to all Water-cooled european cars doing an exception with some older Porsches equipped with air-cooled engines. The main focus of the site is to bring you stories and photos about car shows and events of Water-cooled VWs and European cars around the world (before, this was limited to the region of Baja and the US West Coast). Occasionally I will be posting some of the projects I work on as well as some opinion articles related to the Water-cooled Volkswagen world. More rarely, I will post something regarding Audi F1 coverage as in 2026 Audi will join Formula 1 World Championship as a full works team.

The Waterpumpers name has its origin in a trip I did to visit my grandpa, uncles and aunts in Los Angeles, CA back in 2011. My uncle owns a beautiful vintage 1968 VW Bug with racks. I told him that I had a VW GTI so he was surprised. He told me in the air-cooled world Water-cooled VWs are used to be referred as “water pumpers” due to the fact they have a water pump for the cooling system. This Website would therefore be named after that nickname and into a single word: Waterpumpers.

I hope everyone find this Website useful, inspiring and entertaining. If you have some feedback for us or any questions, feel free to contact us via our social media accounts such as Instagram or Tiktok. 

I wish you happy driving and happy tuning.

Alecsys Manzo.