Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2020 i Fast Car

For generations, the default answer to the question ‘What car should I buy?’ has been ‘Get a Golf’. This is an answer that works equally well for hardcore enthusiasts and for people who know nothing about cars – you know what you’re getting with a Golf; you know it’ll be well screwed together, it’ll have a decent level of equipment and, if you get a GTI, it’ll be a hoot to drive. Thanks to the broad platform sharing across the VAG, it’s useful to note that you can buy Golfs in forms that don’t look like Golfs too. What if you fancy, for example, a Mk5 Golf GTI that’s a bit cheaper? Why, you should get yourself a Mk2 Skoda Octavia vRS! Compare them like-for-like in the classifieds and you’ll…

Oh yes, we’re well into this. Vans and vanning is a bit of us, as these things are the backbone of Britain (or is that just Transits?), and anyone who says they don’t enjoy a cool van is fibbing. Alright, so when the new Caddy launches later in 2020 it probably won’t look all that much like these early sketches, but wouldn’t it be awesome if it did? Those massive wheels, that killer stance, those mad mirrors, it works on every level – and there’s nothing to stop you buying one and making it look like this! The new Caddy is set to be a serious contender too – it’s a 100% new clean-sheet design, made overtly sporty from the off (in its styling, at least; we’ll see if they…

Let’s be honest. January is the worst month of the year. After the indulgence of the Christmas break comes the reality of going back to work, going on a detox and being skint. January sucks. Well, it does if you’re not a petrolhead,. For us lot, there’s a big bright light at the end of the tunnel and it’s called Autosport International. Autosport at the NEC is a show that somehow combines a colossal collection of car culture from just about every genre, era and place you can think of. There aren’t many shows where you can find F1 cars old and new rubbing paintwork with BTCC cars, drifts cars, tuned cars and rally cars from the past and present. It’s like someone took all your favourite toy cars as…

Chris’s paint choice here is very cool, and it’s something we’re surprised not to have seen on more custom builds in recent years. Named ‘Caviar Pearl’, it comes from Jaguar’s 21st-century paintbox, and it’s a so-called ‘Xirallic’ formulation. What’s that? Well, in essence Xirralic is a pigment made of aluminium oxide platelets covered with titanium oxide, which means that it has a much stronger glitter effect than traditional metallic paints, with a unique and unusual shimmering effect in bright sunlight. If you look at Caviar Pearl in shadow, it almost appears dark brown, but as the light hits it becomes a sort of disco aubergine before morphing into a full-blown glitter purple. And the colour’s wasted on the likes of the Jaguar XF, it’s much better suited to a bagged…

The bods at US audio giants are so very proud of this new product, they asked us to park our ample arses on it, quite literally. In fact, we had to sit on this one for a few weeks in the proverbial sense too, because this high-end, hideaway woofer was kept a strict secret until it was launched at the enormous CES Show in Las Vegas, the consumer electronics equivalent of SEMA. As you’d expect, like every other Kicker offering, it went down a storm. We’re happy to say the embargo is up, and the first shipment is set to hit the UK at the end of this month. But what makes this super-compact, under-seat box of serious boom so bloody special? Well, it’s basically a 2020 update of one…

It’s easy to get caught up in the serpentine machinations of the modern Mercedes-Benz model range, particularly when it comes to AMG. See, nowadays they’ll stick an AMG badge on anything and that’s a bit confusing. Peer back through the swirling mists of time to the age before Mercedes-Benz (or rather, DaimlerChrysler) took a controlling interest in AMG in 1990, and we find that ‘AMG Motorenbau und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH’ operated as its own independent entity – an engineering firm specialising in tuning Mercedes-Benz products, although they did dabble in other brands too (AMG Mitsubishi Galant, anyone?). The first commercially available, official AMG Mercedes was the C36 in 1993. So unlike today, when it’s possible to walk into a Merc showroom and choose from a variety of official AMG variants, it…

Name: Tom Clarke Job Role: Senior Marketer, Meguiar’s UK So after last month’s epic journey from Sweden back to Blighty, I’ve made the much shorter trip in the Amazon across to Milton Keynes and into GM Bodycraft’s workshop. These guys are amongst the best fabricators I know, which is bloody handy considering there’s a fair bit to do on the Volvo… Gary, GM Bodycraft’s head honcho, will be prepping the bay for the new engine and gearbox. I’m going to make you wait a little bit longer before I reveal what power-plant will be squeezed into the bay. But I can promise you it’ll be packing a lot more power than the original! He’ll also be doing all the work to allow for a new axle. Gary has his work…

Like most people, I’m really not a big lover of the winter months. It’s cold, the evenings are dark and as I sit here writing this in January, show season seems a long, long way away. Add to that a month of listening to people talking diet and exercise and all that ‘New Year, new me’ crap. But worst of all? The car insurance on my RS4 expires. Just what I need after a very expensive festive season. More often than not I put off the joy of organising my renewal to the last minute. Which is stupid, just as January’s pay day seems a lifetime away. But for 2020 I thought I’d get on the case nice and early to ensure I got a good deal. After all, money…

The butt-kicking little Peugeot you see here is the new 208 Rally 4 and, brilliantly, it’s rocking a perfect 208bhp – a situation that pleases the numerical lobes of our brains very much. So what is it? Well, it’s a rally car, obviously – but it’s also so much more than that. It’s inspiration to every 208 owner out there to create something badass out of the feisty little hatchback. After all, this competition weapon is based on the road-going production-spec car, so there’s nothing here that you can’t theoretically do yourself! The new evolution replaces the old 208 R2 rally car, a model which sold over 450 units and thus proved itself to be Peugeot’s most profitable competition car ever. (See, it’s not all about flame-spitting Group B lunatics…

There have been a lot of interesting rumblings coming from Hyundai’s N division recently. The i30 N proved itself to be one of the biggest surprises the hot hatch market has seen in recent years, elbowing its way into the crowded marketplace dominated by the Golf GTI and the Focus ST and so on, and saying ‘Listen fellas, this is how it’s really done’. It’s a bloody brilliant car, and its success can be largely attributed to the fact that Hyundai poached Albert Biermann from BMW’s M Division to teach the engineers how to make engaging sports cars. The i30 N isn’t just a one-off either; you may remember the N drift van that we recently reported on. And just look what madness they’ve been up to now – a…

First impressions count for a lot, that’s true in all walks of life. Strutting into a room in a crisply tailored suit and owning the floor with steely-eyed charisma and affable charm will permanently file you in everybody’s minds as a good egg, whereas a limp and sweaty handshake or an inadvertent mispronunciation of your own name will forever label you as the forgettable type. We as a species like to think we’re pretty on-point with forming accurate spur-of-the-moment character analyses, although this isn’t always the case. Your first impression of this particular Mk4 Golf might be that, yes, this is the zenith of where the SoCal scene is right now; glinting in the brilliant sunlight, this bagged R32 rocks a slick Stateside vibe that could only have come from…

TURBOZENTRUM HYUNDAI I30N HYBRID, £2,254 We said on the very day they launched the Hyundai i30N that it would prove to be a monster for power tuning in the future and the good news is that the boys at TurboZentrum have proved us (unusually) correct by developing this rather special hybrid turbo. This little blower may look a lot like the original unit. But with just a few basic supporting mods, it’s capable of over 400bhp. Which in the compact Korean rocket is more than enough to keep those arse cheeks in a perpetual clench! With a load of clever in-house machining – technical stuff like milling the compressor wheel for maximum flow and gap-optimising both housings – this Stage-3 item is specifically designed to add gobs of grunt while,…

The Astra H was the first to adorn the now infamous VXR logo and with 237bhp being pumped out of the Z20 turbocharged motor it was more than worthy of Vauxhall’s new performance badge. Some 15 years on and the Mk5 Astra is still a respected hot hatch, but with the help of Nevlock Performance, the stock performance figures of 152mph top speed and a 6.2-second 0-60 time can be vastly improved. Nevlock stock and sell a whole host of engine component upgrades for the Astra VXR, as well as some essential chassis enhancements too, so we’ve highlighted some of their most popular parts in this handy little guide. If you’ve got a Mk5 and you want more power – and let’s face it, who doesn’t? – then you need…

The old saying goes that you should dress for the job you want, rather than the one you have. This is a notion that’s really captured people’s imagination over the generations: Roxette were telling us to get dressed for success back in 1988, S Club 7 ensured their place in posterity by suggesting we reach for the stars, it’s a relatable and practical solution to the inevitable conceptual ennui we find ourselves trudging through in the day-to-day. Better things are on the horizon, you’ve just got to reach for them. Take the gold paintwork on this particularly spangly AE86 Toyota Corolla. Gold is the colour of winners, it’s the top of the podium, it’s something Spandau Ballet believed made you indestructible… and so it’s come to pass here, like a…

HP Tuners, dominating ECU tuning Stateside since 2003, have become a really big deal across the pond. Anyone who has visited SEMA or the Autosport Show for the last couple of years will be fully aware of the ECU tweaking specialists. From the relatively humble beginnings of a group of binary and hexadecimal savvy chaps clubbing together to remap their own vehicles, HP Tuners has grown exponentially to become one of the USA’s largest tuning and diagnostic solutions for a vast range of vehicles equipped with OBD-2 ports. Since 2003 HP has offered an almost endless array of digital adjustments, seamless live-data logging, diagnostic and tuning capabilities, thanks to a range of clever software and hardware solutions. And now they’re set to bring all those years of expertise and experience…

So last season Tom’s R5 GTT build just pipped Dale’s awesome W114 build. In our eyes they were both winners, but this hasn’t stopped Dale wanting his revenge. So they’re both back with their new projects, and of course, we’re here to document the builds. Again, the deadline for the finished projects is Players Classic at Goodwood on 20 June 2020. This might seem like an age away, but when you find out what they’ve got planned, there’s really not much time at all. Let the battle commence……

There’s a saying that does the rounds every few years which really gets our goat and it’s this: don’t sweat the small stuff. In other words, don’t worry about the details. Not only does it sound immensely irritating, it’s a load of utter cobblers. You should absolutely fuss over the details in almost all walks of life. Particularly so when it comes to the all-important task of taking on a classic Ford project. Just ask Ashley Farazmand. He finally finished the build of this outstanding Escort Harrier in the summer of last year after an intensive three-year build and Ashley would be more than pleased to hear you say he’s produced a simple and clean car. Under the skin though, it’s far from that, with hundreds of unique touches and…

The Nissan GT-R50 is one of those cars that’s so outlandish, you almost can’t believe it’s real. We had a good look around it when the covers were pulled away at the Goodwood Festival of Speed back in summer 2018, and the details were just insane – a masterpiece in aluminium and carbon fibre. It was like when manufacturers got a bit carried away with the idea of building one-off specials for the Gran Turismo videogame series a little while back, and we ended up with the bonkers GT By Citroën that genuinely looked like a flying saucer. …but then in late-2019 it was announced that the GT-R50 would be going into limited production, and we realised that we really must be living in some kind of acid-tinged dreamworld. This…

We love a tastefully retrimmed interior. After all, the inside of your car is really the most important bit, it’s where you spend all your time when you’re out and about enjoying it. But this… this is taking the mickey a bit, isn’t it? What you’re seeing here is the Rose Phantom, a Rolls-Royce whose custom interior comprises one million stitches. It’s a bespoke commission by a wealthy Stockholm-based enthusiast who likes flowers so much he’s named all his children after them. He challenged the Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective to create ‘a car that immerses its occupants in a beguiling floral scene’, and that’s just what they’ve done; inspired by Rolls-Royce’s own on-site rose garden, the Phantom’s innards show a progression from buds to full bloom in an asymmetric design that…

Us humans, as a species, don’t like to make things easy for ourselves. Sure, there are people who are happy to coast through life and put in the minimum amount of effort to scrape on by, but these folk are far outweighed by those who harbour wide-eyed dreams and creative aspirations; the ones who want to create interesting things simply for the fact that it hasn’t been done before. It’s true of authors, painters, sportspeople, poets, sculptors, photographers, engineers, singers, inventors drawing up madcap schemes in draughty sheds… wherever people are found, the crackle of creativity buzzes through the air. It would, for instance, have been relatively straightforward for Scott Butler to buy a tidy Honda S2000, fit a few simple off-the-shelf mods, and let that be that. But Scott’s…

“Nice guys finish last. If you want to dominate the motorways, these are the cars you need on your wishlist” Master of the A road, that’s you. Every night in a different Travelodge, smoothing out your M&S polyester-cotton blend in the Corby trouser press, rinsing the minibar for fun-size Pringles tubes and coagulating Haribo. The alarm’s set for the crack of dawn, because you have places to go and people to wow. Time is money, my friend, and the execs signing cheques in Swindon or Maidstone won’t be impressed by someone who arrives in the office car park in a dishevelled old Vectra, wearing crumpled nylon and stinking of last night’s all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. That’s why you drive a full-fat motorway bruiser. The bottom-of-the-range turbo-diesel runabout just wouldn’t cut the…

AutoStar Sutorro, £113 (each) They just don’t get any more retro Jap than these, do they? Except of course that they’re brand new for 2020, even if they do look a tad like they’ve been dug up from some long-forgotten ’70s workshop on the outskirts of Kyoto. But that’s the point, isn’t it? There’s no school like the old skool and these are some of the craziest 15 inchers we’ve seen… well, in the last 50 years. Not to mention some of the best looking. But that’s not all. With a nice girthy 8-inch width and a 4x100PCD, there’s plenty to love for both the Euro and Jap boys here. If these aren’t one of the most popular rims of the season we’ll be smearing our hats with wasabi and…

Every tuning shop and parts manufacturer had an A90 on display, showing off the first simple bolt-on upgrades to bump performance, along with a true excess of styling goods. From the impeccably constructed carbon goodies of the Gazoo Racing line up, as fitted to their blue demo car, all the way to the massive widebody conversion Varis created, which was running on a set of 13J-wide Super GT wheels, shod in 335-section Toyos and custom-drilled to fit the five-lug hub of the Supra. So much for steering then! HKS too went the wide route with their Supra, introducing a widebody conversion that pumps the guards 90mm at each corner and already on sale for those lucky few who’ve already picked a car up. The show overall seemed to be fuelled…

Nope. We’re not going to offer you half the trade price for your car, like those websites. Instead we want to give you the chance to be featured in the best modified car mag on the planet! So, if you own a cool-as-a-cucumber car you think is worthy of Fast Car, we’d love to see it. Please send a selection of good quality images and a spec to jules.truss@kelsey.co.uk, with ‘Feature Car’ as the subject. If we like it, we’ll get back to you to arrange a photoshoot. Simples.…

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s been a while. And I’ve read all the piss-taking comments in the opening projects page about my cars being AWOL (cheers for that Jules). But yes, it’s true that I haven’t had a lot of time over the last few months (you mean the past year – Jules) to spend on my little VAG turbos. The TT especially has been taking up my mum’s drive for what seems like an age now. In fact, an email from Adrian Flux Insurance to say my renewal was due, actually reminded me I own one. So, as they did me their usual cracking deal for the next 12 months, I thought it was high time I pulled it out, stuck some tax on it, bought the old girl…

Although Ashley restarted the Harrier’s rebuild in 2016, he’s been thinking about and planning it for much longer — since he was 13! “I remember using some image software on my dad’s computer to rework an image of a Mk2 Escort into how I wanted it to look, and some of those elements made it into the final build. I’ve spent years talking the project over with Dad, working on what and how I wanted to do this car. We used to watch a lot of the American hot rod programmes on TV and these have influenced the build too, with so many of the details, like moving the cut-outs in the front panel up an inch so they’re hidden behind the carbon fibre bumper, which in turn has been…

STEVE BUTLER’S CITROËN C4 VTS FC says: Here’s one for all you rally fans out there. Owner Steve actually bought the WRC kit before the car, as he searched for the perfect 2.0-litre VTS C4 to carry out the conversion on. Steve really has gone to town on this replica and the attention to detail is astonishing. He’s hand-made the rear spoiler, roof duct and camera pod as they’re not available to purchase, he even fully stripped the interior and had it painted silver to correspond with the original rally cars. And those eagle-eyed readers will have spotted this Citroën is running five stud wheels and not the original four! Why? Because the Rally cars were 5-stud of course. There’s a mountain of work gone into this build and that’s…