Innehållsförteckning för February 2017 från Fast Car

Well readers, it has been a very busy month for Team FC! Not only have we been to the USA and back, on a car culture mission that you’ll get to read about over the next few issues. But we’ve also been putting together a bookazine of our greatest photography and cars from the past few years. What’s a bookazine, I hear you cry? Well, it’s what you’d get if a magazine and a book had wild, unprotected sex – half magazine and half book. We’ve called it Carnography and it’ll be out in late December, so make sure you pick up a copy while stock last. It’ll be in all good newsagents and some rubbish ones too. Anyway, enough about the future and more about the now. The main…

We’re lucky to live in an age when, unless you’re old farts like us, people have largely forgotten that the word Volvo used to be synonymous with ‘dull beige estate car’. Quirky design and brutal horsepower have studded their spec lists for a fair while now, and we reckon the C30 T5 in particular is a car you should be paying attention to. Originally retailing at £25,995 from 2007, you can pick them up for around £5,500 now, which gives you a hell of a lot of car for the money. The tailgate is basically just a sheet of glass, which is surely reason enough. But you also get a premium interior and some good ol’ Swedish sturdiness to how the whole thing feels. The best part, though, is that…

“I never intended for it to be a show car, but I got hooked on it!” To a generation who grew up playing Gran Turismo, the R32 Nissan Skyline begins and ends with the GT-R. This mighty bruiser earned its Godzilla nickname by utterly trouncing everybody throughout the Group A racing universe. GT-Rs entered 29 races of the Japanese Touring Car Championship and won all 29. They also took victory at the 1991 Spa 24-Hour, and made the competition in Australian Group A look rather silly. It’s a formidable car. But those in the know will happily tell you that there’s more to the R32 range than simply Godzilla. Take the GTS-t, for example, which came from the factory with a 212bhp 2.0-litre turbo straight-six. That’s hardly to be…

Witnessing the huge tailback of bespoke machinery embracing performance cars of all eras, making their way in an orderly fashion (yes, really) to the temple of British motorsport, Silverstone circuit, posed the question: why? This visible from space phenomenon was occasioned by the 21st running of the TRAX show – organised by the proprietors of this very publication. TRAX is big. Very, very BIG. Attendance is put at 21,000 souls, with a high percentage of them arriving in their own cars. It is a huge automotive event encompassing one of the largest public trackdays in the country, surrounding a vast array of trade displays, club stands and retail areas, all dedicated to the art of the modified car. Toyo Tyres are major sponsors of the event, so they used the…

Seeing as we’re now veterans of the show, it was good to see straight away that the organisers had shaken things up a bit with the event layout as a whole. Firstly, the show cars were spread across six large halls. Just from waiting at the cleaning area on Friday before the show had even started, it was clear each one had a well-deserved spot in the show. With over 200 cars on display, that’s no easy task! The show never fails to impress with the diversity of cars on display. From the tightest of fitment to three-wheeling lowriders and big-power Japanese cars to bodykitted cars that wouldn’t look out of place 10 years ago but still looking fresh today. The thousands of people who flocked here over the weekend…

“As he also owned the first C2 on air, there was only one route to go down” Sometimes the most unexpected things in life are the best. Take Richard Lines and his show winning SEAT for example. Having already built himself a Fast Car feature-worthy Citroën C2, he needed a new daily motor so that he could keep the C2 in tip-top show condition. Donning his sensible hat, he took all his pocket money down to the local SEAT dealership to see what was on offer. “Parked on the forecourt was a Leon Supercopa FR. I took it out for a test drive and when I got back I knew I had to have it” says Mr Lines. Somewhere on the drive home though that sensible hat blew out…

What’s the most important thing about winter detailing? Keeping your wheels clean? How about protecting that paintwork? Nope, it’s actually making sure you can see where you’re going! After all, it’s no use having the shiniest paintjob or the sweetest hoops in the scrap yard, right? Yep, visibility is a mighty handy thing at any time of year. But as road grime and salt are more prevalent in winter months, not to mention the fact that we’re all driving around in the dark for much of it, keeping those windows clean, inside and out, is absolutely essential. So with that in mind, we thought we’d get in six of the most popular cleaners on the market to find out which one performs best. Fair enough you might say. Although there…

Godzilla is a terrifying entity, there’s no denying that. Since the character’s inception in 1954 in Ishiro Honda’s original film, the King of Monsters has passed into pop culture as a Japanese horror-beast that serves as a metaphor for nuclear weaponry; an indiscriminate, all-consuming force of decimation and unstoppable ruthlessness. Is it any wonder that Nissan’s own monster, the GT-R, is so deeply intertwined with this folkloric Japanese terror? It was the R32 Skyline GT-R that first enjoyed the Godzilla nickname, and it’s continued with impressive persistence right through to today’s R35. We all know the factoids and titbits that make the R35 so special – the nitrogen-filled tyres on knurled rims, the PlayStation-like interface, the plasma-coated cylinder bores and the hermetically sealed lab where the engines are hand-built by…

“There’s simply nothing else out there that looks like this today” There’s one single fact about the Lamborghini Countach that makes it simply the coolest supercar of the ’80s. That’s the fact that its name translates from Italian to English as something close to ‘holy f**k’. It’s an improper translation as these things often are, but that doesn’t stop it being one of the most pleasing bits of automotive trivia around. And boy does it apply to the car you see before you. Now we’d better come clean right away and admit this dragster, a car that looks for all the world like a genuine Lambo that’s been cut up and converted in a manner designed to make purists froth with rage, actually isn’t. No, what we have here is…

Other Feature Cars: Sexy, sleek and sassy Audi S3 2JZ-powered, RB-kitted S15 Carbon-clad Mitsi Evo Bonus Feature: US Car Culture Pilgrimage Jules and Midge drive thousands of miles on an epic State side road trip Shows: Ultimate Stance A show that does exactly what it says on the tin More Stuff: Products, Fast Projects, Tech Guides, Posters, Tests and an Angry Man FC378 On Sale Friday January 6th *Subject to change because it’s Christmas (and Initial G’s 50th Birthday)……

When you think about it, aside from the glitz and glamour of the world’s most outrageous show cars, showcasing brand new products and services is what SEMA is all about. One thing’s for certain too – if you’ve got a big V8 Yank tank, Mopar muscle car or a thoroughly enormous pickup truck, then you’re pretty much sorted for stuff to relive you of your hard earned dollars. That said, even for us Europeans with our expensive gas and funny little cars, there’s no denying you’ll soon find yourself slap bang in the middle of new product heaven. Wheels, tech, parts, tools, gadgets, audio gear – you name it, these guys have got it and, with literally thousands of different items on display, we couldn’t possibly feature them all. After…

Evo is one of those modern motoring buzzwords that immediately spirits forth images of flame-spitting, extravagantly bewinged saloons ripping through Welsh forests, all anti-lag and wastegate chatter. For a time in the 1990s and early ’00s, Mitsubishi’s Evolution series was pretty much unbeatable. Well, it was if you were an Evo fan anyway. If your proclivities lay across the way in the Subaru camp, you may have something to say about that. Yes, the Evo versus Impreza rivalry still simmers away today with just as much potency as it did in the days when the JDM turbo nutters ruled the forests. Nowadays, however, sure, Evos do still find their way onto the stages. But you’re more likely to see them in severely modified and road-oriented form, like the carbon-clad colossus…

The genesis of the Volkswagen Jetta is largely attributable to the suspicion of Americans. It hardly needs pointing out that Stateside motoring was characterised for generations by prolific, prodigious girth. Massively long, hugely wide cars with colossal rumbling V8s. The sort of motors that kicked out about 120bhp from a 7.0-litre displacement, because … well, who cares? Petrol was cheap and efficiency didn’t matter. So when VW launched the Golf to the confused US market in the wake of the oil crisis, it was received with mixed enthusiasm. Certain quarters loved the idea of a small, well-built, European-engineered hatchback. Others were briefly interested, but concerned about where they might stash their many, many sandwiches. They weren’t all that enamoured with hatchbacks, as they’d grown up in the certain knowledge a…

JOSH FISHER’S AUDI TT FC says : We’ve got a lot of time for the first-gen TT. Just ask our Midge. They make him look like that emoji with the heart eyes. And Josh Fisher’s TT ticks a hell of a lot of boxes. He’s rolling smooth and sleek with smoothed bumpers, Cupra R splitter and Votex skirts. While the whole thing’s sitting snake’s-belly low, thanks to an Air Lift V2 system complete with a full boot build and a mint green tank. His choice of wheels is a firm favourite in these parts, as those Ispiri rims look super-premium (but are actually pretty reasonably priced – shhh, don’t tell anyone). It’s not all show and no go either. The engine kicks out 285bhp, thanks to a K04 turbo, R8…