Axis Sport Tuning VW Golf GTI; screaming yellow zonker Showcasing a wheel empire.

Byline: MARK VAUGHN

There wasn't a character in The Fast and the Furious modeled after James Chen, but there should have been. Chen is the magnate behind wheel maker Axis Sport Tuning and he is, as the kids say, a shot caller.

Chen started Axis Sport Tuning in 1997 as strictly a tuning company, offering aftermarket parts to the sport compact buyer. Very soon after, Chen noticed the lack of wheels larger than 16 inches aimed at the sport compact market. So later that year he came out with 17- and 18-inch wheel designs for imports. Two years later he came out with an unheard-of 19-inch wheel aimed at sport compact cars. Success followed.

Axis is just wheels now, but to show off those wheels Chen needs project cars. Chen's yellow project cars are seen in all the right places, in all the right magazines, and they all have a look that makes them almost universally eye-catching. But rather than handle all the tuning stuff in-house, which Axis is no longer set up to do, Chen sends the cars out to the experts.

We saw this GTI and liked it before we knew it was Chen's. When we traced it to him, he quickly listed all the California companies that did the work on it and where they were.

The wheels, of course, are from Axis, Supermesh 19s to be exact with Toyo T1 tires, 235/35 in front and 265/30 rear.

The interior, including Sparco racing seats with suede finish, was done by StitchCraft in Huntington Beach. The audio, with monster bass speakers mounted in the cargo compartment, was done by Advanced Mobile Systems in Garden Grove. The exterior consists of a $1,500 W2G fiberglass GTI body kit available from Wet Works in Stanton (why pay all that money for a real R32?). And all the performance power parts are the work of well-known Volkswagen tuning icon Neuspeed in Camarillo.