Tabla de contenidos para May 2019 en Fast Car

We’re not really morning people here at Fast Car Towers. So when we have to get up early, especially on a Sunday, it has to be for a good reason. And we had one of those a few weeks back when the guys and girls at Auto Finesse invited us down to the grand opening of their latest venture, the Detailing Academy. Not only that, but we’d heard rumours they’d spent £185 on Krispy Kreme doughnuts for the occasion – which made getting out of bed that little bit easier. As to be expected, the opening was pretty damn busy and it gave the guys at Auto Finesse the perfect opportunity to show off the Academy to the industry’s leading players, experts and, erm, us. Auto Finesse is one of…

Then: £27,000 Now: £5,000 If you’ve visited the United States, there’s a good chance the first car you travelled in was a Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. Not that we’re implying you’re some kind of drugs mule or gun-runner. Simply that these specced-up Crown Vics often get converted into taxis when they reach the end of their operational life with the feds. Although interestingly, this conversion seldom involves ungluing the Police Interceptor badge from the boot! The regular Crown Victoria was a popular model in its own right in the US, but the Police-spec variant is just cooler. You’ve seen them on the silver screen skidding about the place and flipping over in pretty much every movie you’ve ever watched – imagine being able to inject a little of that…

Back in the day we only had four channels and it was properly exciting when a bit of WRC coverage came on, or the F1 or some rallycross. Because most of the time there wasn’t a lot on. That’s why WRC rallying used to be so much more popular in the seventies and eighties than it is now. It got proper mainstream TV coverage and it was better than watching sodding Songs Of Praise. But nowadays we’ve got a ridiculous amount of choice of things to watch – hundreds of channels on Sky, Virgin, BT, along with Netflix and Amazon Prime, plus countless dedicated car channels on YouTube and loads more besides. Every minute of every day you can find an old Top Gear rerun on Dave, or a bit…

Liberty Walk Spring Collection, From £10 Winter is officially over and spring is in full swing, which means only one thing. It’s time for a new wardrobe, and we’re not talking about a PAX one from IKEA! Nope, we’re talking about this awesome new clobber from our favourite Japanese aero specialists. They have new designs dropping all the time but we’re particularly fond of the new Works Nation hoodie that’s at the top end of the price spectrum and the Lanyards that are the bottom. They’ll come in particularly handy at a plethora of shows during the 2019 season. www.libertywalk-eu.com Liberty Walk 1:18 Model Cars, £200 For us modifiers, a Liberty Walked supercar is at the very summit of our dream garage, but unfortunately for the majority of us they’ll…

Vossen Forged LC2-A2, from £1315 (each) That’s right folks. For my money is no object wheel choice, I’ve gone for a single-piece wheel! And that really is testament to these ultra-desirable LC2-A2 custom rims from Vossen. Because believe me, there’s a huge amount of three-piece wheels out there I’d happily sell my dear old nan for. These wheels come in a number of different sized forgings (widths in half-inch increments from 8.5-13 inches and diameters from 19-24), along with a simply ridiculous amount of finish options. There’s also a choice of lip and cap finishes, a personalised engraving option and even colour-matched wheel weights (and no, I’m not joking!). www.prestigewheelcentre.co.uk Sizes: 8.5-13x19, 8.5-13x20, 8.5-13x21, 8.5-12.5x22, 10, 11 and 12x23, 10x24 PCDs: Any five-stud, custom centre-lock Offset: Any Finishes: Any gloss,…

Name: Tom Clarke Job Role: Marketer who oversees the UK marketing office, advert placement and key account marketing fulfilment. Unless you have bad times, you can’t appreciate the good times. That’s what I keep reminding myself (and the guys at Reflex) when I look at the bare shell of my R5. It might actually look like we’re going backwards here, but with the car finally stripped, the repair work can finally begin. By this time next month, it’ll be painted and all back together. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But we’re certainly moving in the right direction. In other news, I’ve been busy sorting the main chassis components. First up, the wheels have been dropped off at The Wheel Specialist, in Fareham, where Olly is giving them a…

Check out that before picture of my standard brake disc (see right). It’s nasty, isn’t it? And while a quick stamp on the middle pedal would get rid of that surface rust, it wouldn’t get rid of the average stopping power of my E92. To be honest, sorting the brakes is one of those jobs I should have done after the tuning work was completed a couple of years back. The faster your car is the better brakes you need. It’s basic logic. So what has stopped me (no pun intended)? Well, originally I wanted to fit a big brake kit to sit behind the three-piece 3SDMs I had made. But BBKs aren’t exactly cheap and back then I’d been hit in the wallet for the wheels, the paint and…

We live in exciting times for the supercar genre. As is well-documented, the term was originally coined for the Lamborghini Miura way back in 1966 – a car that transcended everyday transport, it was stunning to look at and moved faster than anyone at the time could comfortably cope with. For generations, that iconic word, supercar, has held children in its thrall and grown-ups spellbound. And these days? The goalposts have moved. The game’s moved on so much that we’ve formulated a new term, ‘hypercar’. Some of these otherworldly machines fuse up-to-the-minute hybrid tech with improbable aero to achieve their scientifically challenging ends, others stick rigidly to the classic big-engine big-horsepower formula. But they’re all doing things we once never believed possible. Of course, as much as the manufacturers endeavour…

Lamborghinis have to be a bit mental. That’s the point. If you want your supercar to be ruthlessly efficient and uncompromising, you buy a Ferrari. If you also want everyone to be a bit scared of you, you get a Lambo instead. These are silly cars for dangerous people. Always have been. With the Gallardo, however, all of this changed. Sure, it was a hysterically fast and noisy car, but the styling was more toned-down, more subdued. It was the least terrifying Lamborghini ever built. However, it shifted over 14,000 units, the firm’s biggest-selling model ever by quite a massive margin. So when the Gallardo’s replacement, the Huracán, arrived in 2014, did it continue to play it safe? Yes and no. It was more aggressive-looking, as well as being faster…

John Hennessey has some pretty serious form when it comes to taking fast cars and turning their amps up to 11. The Hennessey Venom GT was essentially a stretched Lotus Exige with a massive V8 in it, which could accelerate from 0-200mph in 14.5-seconds. There have been numerous bonkers projects since, and the latest is John’s take on the McLaren 600LT. He fancied making it faster than the recently announced Speedtail hypercar – just for the sake of it, really – and there’s a variety of upgrade packages available. The 708bhp pack gives you 0-62mph in 2.6 seconds, the 805bhp option shaves two-tenths off that figure, and for the truly unhinged there’s the HPE1000 spec, which gives you 1,001bhp (the last 1 is all-important), 865lb/ft, and 0-62mph in 2.1s. So…

The BMW i8 is a bit of an oddball in the realm of the supercar. This is a genre that has traditionally been all about excess; from the Lamborghini Miura that pushed the term into common usage back in 1966 with its juicy V12 motor and spaceship styling, to the common crop of absurd hypercars. The Bugatti Chiron has 16 cylinders and 1,479bhp. The McLaren Senna has the sort of aerodynamic body addenda that could allow it to drive up walls. And the i8? It’s got the three-cylinder, 1.5-litre engine from a MINI. Not exactly out to set the world aflame, is it? Ah, but it is. The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. You see, whereas the idea of a hybrid car started off with…

Debate has raged for generations over which configuration of driven wheels is preferable in a car. Hot hatch enthusiasts evangelise about how FWD is essential to their car’s character. Others feel that the front wheels are doing enough already with all the steering and braking and stuff, and it makes more sense to channel the horses to the tail end (which then, of course, gets a bit lively). There’s no right or wrong answer really. You like what you like. But if you want to sidestep this debating quagmire, why not consider the best-of-both-worlds scenario of AWD? With power going to every wheel, you can feel the benefits of both concepts while also having impeccable grip. All-wheel drive systems have come on a lot in recent years. It’s no longer…

Sealey 20V Combo Kit, from £376 Sealey seem to have the answer to all our manly DIY woes here with this awesome five-tool combo pack. It includes a professional tool for just about every job out there, and they all run on the same thoroughly hardcore Li-ion 20V battery, saving you a few quid along the way. The comprehensive cordless kit features, two 3Ah batteries, a drill/driver, 230NM impact wrench, an orbital sander, grinder and what can only be described as a proper weapon of a reciprocating saw, all packed away in an equally hardcore ABS storage case. Bonza. www.sealey.co.uk Hawk Tools Upright Compressor, £120 If you’re serious about your spec’d-up garage kit, then you’ll be needing a compressor – them is the rules! Still, if you’re worried about paying…

Fitting Time: Give yourself at least a good hour or so for each corner. Costs: ......................................................................from £400 You’ll already know coilovers range in price and, as always, we’d recommend going for the very best you can afford. They’re not all equal you see. Cheaper ones may not have the adjustable damping or height adjustment you’re looking for, and full-race items may be a little too harsh for the road. That said, they’re all better than standard springs, right? Euro Car Parts sell a selection of coilover kits for most cars to suit a range of budgets. But we opted for these BC Racing BR Series units as they offer the perfect mix of track-ready performance and compliance for fast road driving. Perfect for what we needed. Specialist Tools: Apart from…

By the time we get to March, there have been a fair few car shows across the UK already. But for a lot of people, the true season opener is Ultimate Dubs. Held at the vast Telford International Centre, this get-together has been showcasing the best and brightest of the British VAG scene since its inception in 2006. Of course, as anyone who’s been to it in recent years will well know, it’s not just a VAG show any more. The ‘Dubs’ in the name ties the show into its core values from its genesis 13 years ago. But now the doors are equally open to other marques, as long as they fit into the key criteria of what makes a UD-worthy car. And what are these criteria? Look over…

Buying a car without going to view and drive it is generally a pretty bad idea. You literally have to take the sellers word for it when it comes down to the car’s spec and condition. You’re risking buying a piece of junk and financial disaster. But what if you want to buy a car from Japan? Well, from a dealer or a third-party specialist you should hopefully be able to get some good honest details, but what about buying something you’ve spotted literally minutes earlier for sale at a large car auction in Japan? A few small pictures, a very vague description of specification and condition, and no driving information at all barring the fact they managed to drive it to the auction block is all the help you’re…

The Bugatti Type 57 SC Atlantic is the sort of car that gets concours judges and billionaire collectors hot under the collar. Ralph Lauren, a man of impeccable style, had one in his collection reportedly worth over $40m. So when Bugatti themselves put out the message that they’re building a one-off modern reimagining of the Atlantic, the moneyed motoring world listens. Launched at this year’s Geneva Motor Show, this rakish new model is called simply La Voiture Noire which you’ll know simply means ‘the black car’. Yep, these guys like to be understated, because they’re well aware they don’t have to show off about this car. It speaks for itself, in low grumbling tones which suggest it kinda wants to rip your heart right out if only it weren’t so…

Sure, it may be a little unusual to kick off the Fresh Kit section with an audio product, but that goes some way to explain just how special this full-on slab of electronic wizardry really is. Now we all know US firm JL Audio is best known for their super-high-end SQ applications. But what they’ve done here is managed to cram all their usual sound processing knowhow into a hardcore Class D amp, which is not only fully optimised for subwoofers, but it kicks out the sort of power that makes a Scud missile look a little on the subtle side. What we’re looking at here, is 15000 watts RMS of sheer grunt, the most powerful amplifier JL Audio have ever produced. And it comes with an extra-special low impedance…

KICKER COMPC 10-INCH LOADED ENCLOSURES, £160 When it comes to the science of engineering hernia-inducing, hardcore bass, there’s not many that can even begin to keep up with the lords of the lows over at Kicker. That said, they may be arguably most famous for their monster square subs, which are clearly forged in the fires of hell itself. But nowadays they’re all about producing some of the most powerful, compact enclosures on the market too. These new CompC units are a case in point. They may only be packing a punchy 10-incher, but what a woofer these award-winning CompC units really are. And that goes double for when they’re matched to an immaculately engineered, thin-profile ported box that’s optimised specifically for each sub. The results, as you may expect,…

This is, by any measure, a lot of engine to shove into a Corrado. Just look at it. Yes, we know VW bolted a VR6 into the plush Golf-based coupé way back in 1992, but it was never anything like this. This is a whole other level. Perhaps we’d better rewind a little. Start from the beginning. Then you’ll see why we’re having such difficulty stopping ourselves from tripping over our irretrievably dropped jaws. See, the Corrado has been setting hearts aflame since it emerged from its Golf-shaped chrysalis back in 1988. At launch, this pretty little thing did its level best to upset the sports car applecart by being belligerently chunky, starkly defying the sylph-like styling of the era, the G60 rocking a supercharger where other manufacturers were dabbling…

I have bought my fair share of wheels over the past 15 years. In fact my garage is currently home to three sets of hoops, including a custom set of three-piece 3SDMs. But what are my favourites wheels right now? Well, I’ve narrowed them down to these five choices, which I think covers most of the market, from base model hatchback to high-end supercars… AutoStar A510, £659 (set) It would be a bit hypocritical of me not to include my most recent wheel purchase in my favourite wheels feature, so here they are, AutoStar’s A510s, which I fitted to my E92 335i. So why do I love them so much? Well, for me, I don’t think there is a better value 19-inch wheel on the market in hyper black. Not…

Name: Dale Masterman Job Role: Sales and marketing executive, events coordinator and resident paint nerd. So this month started with a trip down to see Kustom Kolors in Dorset, which is quite a trek from Meguiar’s UK headquarters in Daventry. 132 miles to be precise. So why use them and not a more local firm? Well, as you know, I spend a fair chunk of my time in the detailing bay, and whenever I’ve worked on a Kustom Kolors painted car, the quality of finish blows me away. Tom and I know our project builds will be scrutinised by showgoers, especially the paint, so I really wasn’t prepared to compromise on this part of the car. Only the best will do! We met up with Colin Ware from Kustom Kolors…

JORDAN DE CARVALHO’S HONDA CIVIC SEDAN FC says: The fourth-gen Civic sedan is fast becoming one of the trendiest cars you can get your hands on if you’re clued up on your scene-friendly motors, especially when it’s finished in the infamously retro Cappuccino Brown Metallic colour scheme like young Jordan’s beauty here. Frenchman Jordan travelled all the way to the UK back in early 2017 to get his hands on a slice of the Civic Sedan magic, and it’s fair to say he’s gone on to create something truly wonderful in the two years since with this decked stunner. Now rocking a range-topping Air Lift Performance air suspension system and propped up on those extremely rare three-piece Mugen rims, he was sending off a clear message from the very start…