Fast Car October 2017

Us modifiers have been trying to make our cars faster ever since Karl Benz built the first gasoline-powered automobile back in the 19th century. OK, so that might be a slight exaggeration. But you get the idea. These days it’s relatively easy to make your car faster, but once upon a time there wasn’t such a thing as aftermarket performance parts, so modifiers would ‘simply’ swap their engines for more powerful ones. Thankfully this style of modifying still exists and the engine transplant is regarded as the pinnacle of all modifications. Whether you’ve swapped out your B16 for a B18 or dumped your GT86’s 2.0-litre boxer engine for a Ferrari 458 lump (like Ryan Tuerck has - see page 90), there’s just no denying engine swaps are cool. Because of…

And the winners are… Top five cars Meguiar’s would like to drive home in: Rat Rod Pick-Up........................Tim Mansell Mazda RX7................. Jordan Lewis-Warren Mk5 R32 Golf ............................ Danny Birch Red Austin.............. Mark & Carolyn Stewart Renault 5 Turbo.................. Steve Thomsom Snap-on Award ..... Andrew Carter’s Mk2 Golf Air Lift Award ................. Jon Livermore’s Evo Coming soon… We always aim to find and feature the best cars from around the world and bring you the most informative features possible. In the next couple of months you’ll find features on this utterly bonkers Supra-powered E36 from these very shores. And also this insane MR2 from Thailand. The Angry Man “THEY’RE BANNING ALL PETROL AND DIESEL CARS IN 2040! QUICK! PANIC!” No, let’s not panic. Because, quite frankly, nothing has really bloody…

Meguiar’s UK hosted another round of their now-famous summer hangouts, dubbed the ‘BBQ Club’. Back this year and bigger than ever, the BBQ club sticks to the familiar format and invites car guys and girls to bring their latest builds to Meguiar’s UK HQ and chill in whatever sunshine British summer can muster. Being a BBQ event, it comes with a large helping of grilled meat and the first 50 cars are greeted with a swag bag chocked full of goodies from Meguiar’s and friends. This year over 100 cars crammed into Meguiar’s back garden, representing all aspects of car culture. We spotted low-riders, hot rods, old school Fords, drift cars, VWs, Porsches, two police interceptors and even a Dodge Charger! For 2017 Meguiar’s stepped up the awards game. Each…

If there’s one thing to take away from Sam Flack’s S2000 story, it’s this: never try and get in the way of a man with a plan. You see, the last three years of this West Sussex-based travel exec’s life have almost entirely been filled with trying to prove his peers wrong by building one of the first wide arch-kitted S2000s on this continent. And a limited budget, a slightly shonky base car and only a driveway to perform it all on weren’t going to obstruct him in the slightest… “It was always the idea to put this kit on it,” Sam says, of the time when he was still in the process of purchasing one of Honda’s acclaimed roadsters – and pondering the idea of a seriously JDM M&M…

With the sheer amount of car shows held across the UK, it’s always going to be a mammoth task to introduce a new one into the mix. It can take years for a show to become established as one of the must attends of the year. But SlammedUK’s Gravity event, now only in its second year, has already found that winning formula to place itself firmly as a stand-out in the car show calendar. Held at Stoneleigh Park close to Coventry, the two hangers were full of some of the best show cars from around the UK and Europe, as well as some of the top traders. There was even a special guest appearance from Monster Energy, bringing along DMO Deejay to keep the tunes flowing across the day. Steve…

“I like to think different. That dictated the whole of the project” The car’s nickname is Rolo,” says Simon Calleja. “My mate Darren came up with that, as it’s got a caramel centre. The name’s kinda stuck.” You can see the logic when you peer through the window of this supremely sugar-sweet Mk4 Golf. It looks so deliciously caramely in there, it’s all you can do to stop yourself from climbing in and licking the seats. You’d be wrong to do so, of course, as seats are where people’s bums go. No, the principal aim of making the innards of this car resemble the kind of confectionery that has crack-like addictive qualities is that, well, this is a sensible family car. If it looks delicious in there, it’s easier to…