Tabla de contenidos para October 2020 en Fast Car

The show season has been hit pretty hard this year, that goes without saying. But with social restrictions easing toward the end of the summer, it was possible for small-scale meets to happen in a safe and socially distanced way… and if AET Motorsports’ open day is anything to go by, this sort of gathering really is the way forward! “We felt that with the show season being a drop-out and having the ability to comply with government guidelines for Covid-19, it was time to show the wider car community what goes on inside the VUDU Garage at AET Motorsport,” says boss-man Nick Cook. Having a wide audience and customer base across their VUDU range was always going to guarantee a strong mix of cars, through the VAG, Ford and…

Yeah, it’s good that designers have realised that everyone wants a nice big rev counter. It used to be bloody disappointing in the nineties when you climbed into your ‘Fiesta or similar’ rental car and found that the bargain-basement spec level had replaced the tacho with a big clock. You don’t need a big clock. But you’d always have useful things like oil pressure and amps and oil level and stuff that you just don’t get these days. And cars with turbos always came with a boost gauge, because turbos were exciting. But in the vast majority of cars today, you just get a rev counter, speedo, fuel gauge and – for the sake of providing you with some illusion of control and/ or mechanical sympathy – a water temp…

KICKER QUAD BOX, £1500 Like your bass big and beefy? Well, it won’t come any bigger or beefier than from this! In fact, with a recent resurgence in massive (but thoroughly high-end) sound systems on the world show scene, we can see these being among the hottest audio products of the year. Featuring four (yes, bloody four!) of Kicker’s famous LR7 square woofers, this absolute beast will eat up 2400 watts all day long, and that’s proper watts, too – like RMS watts – none of that peak power twaddle. In fact, you could rock up and tickle Chuck Norris right on the love spuds, and you still wouldn’t feel a kick quite as hard as you’ll get from this bastard. At 71cm deep and nearly a metre wide, it’s…

Something really amazing David Platt (one of ‘the twins’) does is to create accurate and perfectly detailed 1:18-scale models of the RS Turbos that have been lovingly reimagined in the Carrera Bodyworks dream factory. He’d already put herculean efforts into replicating Jez’s own silver Escort as well as brother Stuart’s red one, so when Carl’s project was underway he couldn’t help himself. These custom creations are based on Otto resin models, with all sorts of one-off fabrication to make them faithfully recreate the full-size cars. The amount of effort and expertise involved is truly incredible. “David’s custom-made and 3D-printed all sorts of bits to make this model of Carl’s car,” says Jez. “I don’t know if Carl’s hoping to keep it for himself, but he’ll have to put his hand…

Show-ready drift cars are one of the most brilliantly confusing things on the modding scene. The whole point of drifting is to spend the entire time having an accident, skidding at zany angles and then j-u-u-uust catching it before something imperilling occurs, then flicking into another accident in the opposite direction, and so on and so on until either you score enough points to win the bout, or you succumb to the whims of fate and actually have the full-blown accident you sort of deserve. As such, cars built for this purpose are often function-over-form affairs: machines built to be hilariously agile, supremely chuckable, amusingly powerful, and ever-eager to atomise their rear tyres at will. What they aren’t, usually, are show queens. This is because they’re always covered in sticky…

The sweat beads on the brow as the pulse quickens. Tick… tock. Tick… tock. The sound of inevitability, those infinitesimal slivers of time edging by as you wait for the flag to drop. Tick. You’re pushing against yourself; the best times you’ve set, the highest speed, the latest braking, the most extreme lateral G. Tock. Everything you’ve achieved in building the car, hurtling toward this one make-or-break dash for the chequered flag. Tick. You’ve built it well, you know you have, with quality parts and a clear strategy; everything that happens now is down to your own human fallibility. Tock. Race time. Drop the clutch, excite the hydrocarbons, agitate the rubber, get the jump on your opponents. These coming minutes, these are the ones that matter. Time spirals and telescopes…

JULES First FC: August 2002 FAVE FC FEATURE CAR? Too many to choose from after 18-years but I’ll say Kohei Miyata’s Mazda FC RX-7 from issue 404. FAVE FC BUILD? Ohh, Jap Prelude? Retro Madza 323? Both close, but it’s the 350Z dream build for me. FAVE FC PROJECT CAR? Has to be my first big build, my Mk4 Supra TT. FAVOURITE SHOW? SEMA (Vegas, baby). FAVE FC EXPERIENCE SEMA with Midge. (Awww how romantic! – Initial G) FAVOURITE FC COVER? Crikey! That’s a tough one. But either the 30th Birthday or 400th issue……

The Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen is basically a fossil. One of the most long-lived elements of the automotive ecosystem, designed back when this was all fields – like an old Land Rover, but grumpier. It’s got chunky external door hinges and indicators plonked on top of the wings and all sorts of decades-old design features, like your gran’s living room. Very few people who’ve driven a G-Wagen have said ‘You know what? This thing needs to be twice as powerful as a Ferrari F40.’ Nevertheless, that’s actually happened, and you’re looking at it here: the G63, tuned by Posaidon. The already-mental 4.0-litre V8 has received bigger turbos, ported heads, a new exhaust system and various other tweaks, thereby creating a 927bhp house-brick that nobody needs. But whoever cared about ‘need’?…

We’re raising a glass to a legend this month, as tragically we’ve had to wave a final farewell to Keith Ripp. It’s no exaggeration to say that this man was one of the most important figures in the modified car scene from the 1980s to the present day. Keith was an incredibly accomplished driver, having won the World Rallycross Championship no less than three times – but it’s his influence in the field of aftermarket modding retail that really put him on the map for all of us at Fast Car, when we were growing up and finding our way with car projects. As the founder of Ripspeed, Keith brought quality, affordable tuning and styling products to the masses. Starting out selling go-faster parts for Minis from his premises in…

Some cars are untouchable. Or so people might have you believe. That’s what makes it so much fun when you see some of the outrageously mischievous builds that have been doing the rounds in recent years, like the Bentley Continental GT that’s been turned into a tube-frame dragster, Ryan Tuerck’s GT86 drift car with the Ferrari 458 engine, the R34 Skyline which appeared in sister-mag Banzai with a 2JZ motor… some people just like to shake things up. Build cars simply for the hell of it, embrace the hate, no f**ks given. OK, so maybe the first-gen Mazda MX-5 isn’t quite in ‘untouchable’ territory just yet, but it’s getting close. There’s still oodles of them on the scene having cool mods lavished upon them, and there’s a thriving aftermarket; we’ve…

There are no secrets these days. We used to exist in a world where you learned things by finding them out for yourself: in a society without mobile phones, you’d have to call your mates’ landlines on the off-chance that they were in, or just go round to their house and see if they wanted to hang out. If one of your buddies had a project car in mid-build, you’d only know what stage it was at by popping over there with a few beers and pitching in with the spanners (or, perhaps, believing the boasts they were chucking around in the pub). But today? Social media has killed the mystery. That little device in your pocket lays bare every last detail of everybody’s endeavours, tip-toeing through the build process…

Name: Lee Ablewhite (aka Leaky) Age: 36 Occupation: Plumber Instagram: @leaky_ leeroy First car: Mk2 Fiesta 1.1 Popular Favourite car: R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R Favourite modification on your car? One-off rear window louvre Favourite show: Ford Power Live Track day or show-and-shine? Show-and-shine with E.O.E.F Lessons learned from this project: Never lean in and push the start button without checking it’s in gear. Otherwise it pushes you out of the way, flattens your wheelie bin, and crashes into your garage – doing a burnout with nobody in it. Expensive lesson! Any future plans? I have Monkey Wrench working on my bespoke headlights as we speak… and future plans will involve the R34 Skyline…

The 225bhp Mk2 Focus ST is an outstanding car in its own right. But while cynics may point out that sharing its engine and stirring in a few extra horses does not make an RS, that attitude really misses the point. The difference between ST and RS is way more than simple mapping: there’s a bigger turbo, along with an uprated intercooler, forged crank, Quaife diff, RevoKnuckle suspension, and much more aggressive aero. Emerging in 2009, the Mk2 RS immediately set a new standard for B-road blasters; it offered 301bhp and 325lb.ft from its shouty 2.5-litre five-cylinder turbo motor, with a quoted top speed of 163mph. Yes, it was still a practical hatchback, but it served up performance that would give Porsche 911 owners something to worry about. It’ll go…

Niche supercars from boutique start-ups always sell well, don’t they? That’s why every other car you see on the road is a Jensen S-V8 or a Connaught Type D Syracuse or a Ronart Lightning. So you’re bound to be seeing this new Hyperion XP-1 everywhere in the future, right…? Er, cynicism aside though, it’s an interesting idea. The concept is to build an eco-friendly hypercar, and instead of harnessing the leaps and bounds made in electric power that everyone else is trying, this is powered by hydrogen. Putting their fingers in their ears and ignoring the fact that major manufacturers like BMW and Honda have been trying and largely failing to make hydrogen cars viable for decades, the XP-1’s engineers have created something that will apparently do 0-62mph in 2.2-seconds,…

Price then: £28,000 Price now: £4,500 While anything wearing a Skyline badge seems to be getting more and more pricey, the Stagea appears to have plateaued over the last few years. ‘A what?’, you may ask… well, it’s essentially a Skyline estate. The Stagea was Nissan’s answer to the Subaru Legacy: a big, practical estate car with a variety of high-performance options. Helpfully it shared a lot of components with the Skyline, which is why you see so many of them at shows converted to GT-R spec. The name was used from 1996 right up to 2007, although it’s the earlier cars we’re really interested in – the Series 1, built from ’96 to ’98, and the Series 2 from ’98 to ’01. The Series 1 was closely related to…

Today, drifting will almost certainly illicit some sort of pre-conception from most people in the car tuning world. Whether that is a positive or negative reaction, will be down to your own experiences with the sport. Even describing drifting as a ‘sport’ will almost certainly raise an eyebrow or two amongst some of you… I’m fortunate enough to have been involved in drifting since the very early days in Europe. I attended those first events where competitors would arrive in their own street cars, compete, and then drive home again. There were no real safety regulations in those days. There were no roll cages, race suits, HANS devices, Nomex underwear or fire suppression systems, although helmets were mandatory. A car with more than 300-horsepower was considered to be another world…

WOLFRACE GTP, FROM £227 (EACH) If you like your rims a tad on the gargantuan side (like about the size of the Incredible Hulk’s dinner plate), then you’ll love these new GTP offerings from Wolfrace. They’ve got the fun-size version, which comes in at 9x20-inches, plus a thoroughly man-size offering – the 9.5x22-inch behemoth. So, clearly what they both needed was a rather sexy split-ten-spoke design that goes all the way to the edge of the rim, making them look even bigger! Still, we reckon these are some of the classiest ‘dubs and above’ from the British brand to date, and it’s great to see that these can be custom-drilled to any 5-stud fitment. OK, admittedly, you’re going to need a pretty serious vehicle to cram a set of these…

Jules: “I had octopus tonight, and it made me think of you.” Midge: “Did you cook it, or just scare it to death with that shirt?” Midge: “Suffolk, yeah it’s just like the Maldives, if you squint a bit.” Jules: “I finally put that pressure washer to good use.” Midge: “What you cleaned your car?” Jules: “Er, something like that.” Staff Celebrity Lookalikes It’s been a long time since we had a celeb lookie likey here in FC, not since the Jules vs Numa Numa bloke incident of 2010. Still, when we discovered this little beauty, how could we not put it in? It turns out our milky-white G, in his younger days, looked just like the Shermanator from the American Pie movies. In fact, if they’d actually filmed those…