Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2018 i Fast Car

show at Silverstone on Sunday 1 October. A must for petrolheads, the TRAX show was a true celebration of performance car culture, allowing more than 18,000 visitors to not only view automotive excellence at close quarters but also experience it. With sponsors including BC Forged Wheels, BC Suspension, HardRace, K-Sport, Goodridge, Samco, ValetPRO, VIBE Audio, EBC Brakes and Toyo Tires, this was manna from heaven for fast car enthusiasts. So the next time you think the show season ends in September, think again, because TRAX has just extended the summer. Wahoooo. Roll the pictures… Apart from January, October has to be one of the most depressing months on the calendar. It basically signifies the end of warmth, shorts and pub gardens and the beginning of dark nights, rain, and supermarkets…

KAMBR 400R, From £640 (set) Kambr wheels may be one of the newest companies to hit the streets in 2017, but they’ve been properly smashing it when it comes to launching some of the most quirky designs and finishes. Their latest wheel, the 400R here, has to be one of the coolest yet, and it comes with one undeniable trick up its sleeve. Scientifically speaking, this one’s got all the tasty looks of a directional-forged monoblock, only without the massive kick in the spuds when you hand over your credit card. I mean, 160 quid for a whole 8.5x18-incher is not to be sniffed at, right? It also happens to be one of the most useable sizes out there for modern motors. With a set of decent 215/40s and a…

Sealey Lifting Kit, £132 Here’s a sweet little workshop bundle no self-respecting modifier or mechanic should be without. But you’ll still have to get in there sharpish to get this lot at that money, because it’s a special offer with over 90 quid off the list price for Christmas. It’s all rather festive of the chaps at Sealey, we’re sure you’ll agree! Anyway, this pro-quality lifting kit contains all the gear that’s essential for the rather important task of not dropping your motor on your nut. For that very reason it includes one of their industry standard three-tonne workshop jacks and a set of rather hardcore-looking ratchet stands. There’s also a huge 600mm breaker bar, and they’ve even thrown in a free pair of mechanics gloves so you won’t get…

There’s a lot to be said for treating the petrolhead in your life to an audio upgrade this Christmas, not least because Pioneer, easily one of the most respected names in the business, has recently unveiled its expanded range of brand new, cutting-edge audio offerings. Not only do the products below groan under the (figurative) weight of advanced features and industry-leading functions, but they will transform the manner in which your nearest and dearest listens to their music, making it a double-whammy of a gift! PIONEER AVH-Z5000DAB SRP £559 Pioneer’s AVH-Z5000DAB is able to strike the perfect balance between performance, technology and price, making it something of an audio legend (and a bit of a bargain to boot) and more than capable of holding its own against more expensive offerings.…

How your car handles through the twisties is perhaps the most important aspect of performance driving. Big-bollocks power figures, hairy-chested engine displacements and inflated boost pressures get all the attention of course. But exactly how your car puts down all that grunt, and how well it stays on the road, is even more vital to your lap times and to stop that big ol’ tree “coming out of nowhere”. The truth is, the way you set up your chassis will always dictate how well your car stays planted around corners. Not to mention how effectively all those little horsepowers translate to forward motion without too many being lost. With only a few exceptions, standard cars have always been built as a compromise between handling prowess and ride comfort, usually with…

ASLE TJELTA’S MERCEDES 190E 2.5-16 FC says : If you’ve ever felt like you’re missing out on opportunities because you’re a youngster, you could do a lot worse than take a leaf out of Asle’s rather inspirational book here. Because when this Norway-based hero decided he wanted something a little more exciting for his first car, back when he was 18, a few years ago, he worked day and night to snap up this Cosworth-tuned Merc 190E 2.5-16. The car had inspired him in DTM races growing up. And while this is a very special car in his own right, Asle wanted more, namely the super-rare ‘Evolution 1’ homologated version of this super saloon. So can you guess what he did? He set about completely transforming his car into an…

• Custom body wrap • 3-piece Avant Garde wheels • Air Lift Performance suspension Feature Cars: Awesome Audi S3 Sick Honda S2000 Gorgeous Golf Mk2 Special Features: Top 10 Wolves In Sheep’s Clothing Did you know an Almera GTi has an SR20 under the bonnet? Well you do now, and you’ll know even more next month. Out There: SEMA Midge and Jules are off to Vegas for the biggest show in the automotive calendar Plus: Product tests, Posters, Fast Projects, and loads more too #390 On Sale Friday December 8th *Subject to change because Midge and Jules are in Sin City…

We doffed our bobble hats and headed to Wiltshire’s Castle Combe Circuit for some hardcore rally action… Rallyday is the biggest rally show in the universe. OK, maybe not the universe. But it’s big. You get me? Each September, the great and good from the world of rallying descend upon Castle Combe Circuit in Wiltshire to celebrate this cracking sport and there’s always a load of epic cars to drool over. From Group B monsters from the ’80s – icons like the Metro 6R4s, Lancia 037s and Audi Quattros – to the latest ballistic machines from the WRC, there’s something for everyone. Best of all, many of these amazing (and highly valuable) cars get thrashed on track. Where else can you get to see that? And, unlike many events, you…

“Having to drill a hole in the £4,000 carbon fibre rear spoiler isn’t something you want to do every day!” Our Japanese chums have a glorious heritage of creating extreme bodykits. In the early-’90s, the likes of VeilSide and Erebuni produced kits for everything from MR2s to Supras, transforming them from mild to wild. But in recent years, the dudes from the Land of the Rising Sun have raised the bar, yet again. Ever since Wataru Kato burst onto the scene, our newsfeeds have been bombarded with a relentless flow of jaw-dropping cars. From Porsches, to Lamborghinis, Liberty Walk has stamped its mark on pretty much every high-end car you can imagine. Ferrari 488? Yep. Lamborghini Aventador? Of course. McLaren 650S? You betcha! Characterised by wide, riveted-on over fenders, you…

ESM FF1, FROM £210 (EACH) These chunky 18-inch, matt-finish multi-spokers from American wheel maestros ESM, definitely have a substantial (some may say bloody weighty) look to them. So you’ll probably be surprised to find out they’re actually pretty damn light. In fact, the entry-level 8.5x18 incher only weighs 23lbs (that’s around 10kg in Roman Catholic). And the absolutely whopping 11x18-inch version tips the scales at a smidge under 12kg. So there’s no surprises that these are not only designed to look amazing on the street, but they’ll do you plenty of favours on the track too! The real question then, is how do they keep the weight down, along with the prices? Well, these are their first wheel that takes advantage of the dark art of flow forming, a process…

EasySkinz Phone Wraps, From £9 This has to be one of our top ideas of the year, not to mention one of our favourite products since, well, ever. After all, why stop at vinyl wrapping your motor when you can mod all your favourite devices too? Modify everything, that’s our motto! In fact, now we’ve seen the idea in the flesh, it seems pretty dumb that no one’s thought of it before. EasySkinz offer a whole load of pre-cut, protective wraps for all the latest phones and tablets from Apple, Samsung, Google, Sony and, to be fair, just about everyone else too. You can even customise all the most popular games consoles. They’ve already got a shed load of classy wraps ready to go for the iPhone 8 and iPhone…

Never trust your mates to have your back on social media. Because when they’re not digging up compromising photos of you that you thought had been wiped off the face of the earth several years previously, they’ll be tagging you in offensive memes and generally giving you a virtual ribbing. Banter is basically all Facebook is good for nowadays, and nobody is safe! And if you want a really extreme example of this phenomenon in action, just ask construction project manager Gary Sung how the heck his EF Civic hatch project car here ended up looking like the Pink Panther’s daily drive a couple of months back. “It all started when my mate Hoho said my car would look good in pink for the coming show season,” our man begins…

Based on the amount of local mini-meets we’re invited to every single time we log onto Facebook, it’s safe to say the modified car scene is in a very strong place right now. And while this is clearly fantastic news, sometimes it’s good to attend one of those absolutely enormous, anything-goes events once in a while, to really get our tickers racing. If you’re scouring for such a show in the autumn months, look no further than 100% Tuning, held in beautiful Dutch city of Rotterdam each October. An indoor affair that’s become known as a hub for tuning fans all over Europe, around 50,000 international punters pass through its doors over the weekend. The show’s organisers work hard before each instalment to invite several hundred of the continent’s top…

Isn’t driving in the summer great? The roads are dry and warm, the views out of the windscreen paint a beautiful, sun-clad picture of our pleasant surroundings, and the biggest worry for most of us boils down to what temperature to set the climate control to. But as those leaves begin to fall and we dig our musty parkas out of the loft once again, a little car prep can go a long way towards avoiding having to spend the night in a barn with a lonely farmer whilst waiting for the AA to try and track you down through the snow. Doesn’t sound appealing? You’d better listen to our top winter advice, then… 1. RUBBER UP Although not a legal necessity in the UK, you could do a lot…

“It turns heads wherever I take it. I still find it pretty surreal” My history of modifying is all VW!” That’s a phrase we hear a lot from Volkswagen owners. There’s something about the brand that reels people in, pins them down and indoctrinates them like some weird cult. And Jordan Green has been hanging off the towering VeeDub ladder from day one. “My first car was a Mk3 Golf,” he explains. “A barely running rustbucket on cheap coils and awful wheels, which I pumped way too much money into trying to save. That’s the car that sparked it all off for me. When it went to car heaven, I got a Mk4 Golf. And then came the Scirocco. I also had a Polo Classic saloon while the ’Rocco was…

“It’s running less power than my Subaru had, but is much more fun and scary!” Did you know that Frisbees originally came about by people throwing around empty pie containers from the Frisbie Pie Company over in the States? Sometimes, the hugely popular products in our lives become well known for an entirely different reason to that originally intended. In the car world, Nissan’s mighty S-chassis bloodline has become perhaps the most famous example of this unexpected fame at work. You see, when the humble S10 Silvia was launched in the mid-seventies as the firm’s affordable RWD sports GT car, no one could’ve predicted this coupé’s younger siblings would go on to create arguably the most popular string of drift base cars on the entire planet for the following few…

One of the biggest mistakes people make in winter is washing their car too much. Unfortunately, this is when most of the damage is done, inflicting unnecessary scratching and rather annoying swirl marks on your paintwork. What IS important however, is getting your motor prepared and protected for the winter months. With that in mind (and in an ideal world) you’ll thoroughly detail your car about this time of year, adorn it with a tough LSP product for supreme surface protection, and then leave it with little more than a periodic hose-down until spring. Of course, we realise that this isn’t always practical. Most LSPs won’t last for long enough for starters. You’ll also be needing a product that’s suitably hardcore to stand up to the increased fallout that will…

The UK has a rich history of jaw-slackeningly awesome company demo cars. And it isn’t hard to see why. Demo cars don’t just allow companies to showcase their wares in the best possible light. They allow them to connect with their potential customer base in a tangible manner. OK, that perhaps isn’t the most explosive introduction to a feature you’ve ever read. But it is necessary. Y’see the Subaru BRZ you see before you has been built by none other than Pioneer UK, one of the audio industry’s biggest heavyweights and a firm with a keen eye for a stunning project car. This isn’t the first time this particular Scooby has graced various media, of course. The first was in 2016, though back then the BRZ looked far subtler, understated…

Pick up any of those inspirational quote books you see near the checkouts at Poundland and there’ll be one message in particular you’re sure to see time and time again. And it goes along the lines of this: be happy with what you’ve got. And while these books might be the most irritating things man has ever created, there’s definitely some truth in it, when you take a step back and think about it. With advertisements constantly reminding us that if we buy more stuff we’re sure to be happier people, it’d do a lot of us some good to remind ourselves of this ethos from time to time. It’s something the modified car world could also benefit from, too. With many believing only the most expensive, fastest base cars…

It’s often said the grass always seems greener on the other side, and, in automotive terms at least, it certainly rings true. Just think, how many times have you been scrolling through a forum (or indeed Facebook) and been struck by the looks of a car from halfway across the planet, a model you could never have bought as it wasn’t imported to the UK? Sometimes the car in question was sold in a totally different specification in different domestic markets, with the US DM being a case in point. A knee-jerk reaction kick-started a fixation with safety and emissions in the early ’70s, which in turn resulted in all imported cars being subjected to a series of extensive (some might say draconian) modifications, including massive bumpers, restrictive inlets and…