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MODIFIED BMW 540I: EURO VISION

Lukas Wagiel’s childhood yearning for ’90s BMWs left a very clear imprint in his mind of what he wanted to create one day. And when he imported this one-owner E34 Touring from Germany to the UK, he had the perfect base with which to realise his vision and build his perfect modified BMW 540i.

From Performance BMW. Words: Dan Bevis. Photos: Scott Paterson

Rarity is a hugely desirable currency in the automotive world. Look at the Ferrari F40 – the bedroom wall poster for countless kids of the ’80s and ’90s, it’s an obscure and seldom-seen beast. Certainly not something you spot on the road every day. And how many of those were built? 1311 examples, all-in. Or take the case of the Lamborghini Miura, the original supercar – indeed, the car for which the very term ‘supercar’ was coined. Just 764 Miuras were built. As a total percentage of all the cars ever made, that’s… well, it’s a figure so tiny our calculator started smoking when we tried to figure it out.

But Lukas Wagiel has something rarer. You see, those kids growing up in the late 20th century weren’t all dreaming of jewel-like Italian toys. For Lukas, it was menacing and well-specced BMWs that formed the narrative of his automotive dreams. Fast-forward to the present day and the car you see him with here is super-obscure collector fodder: a 540i Touring with a manual gearbox, resplendent in Cosmos black metallic with factory M Tech styling and panoramic roof… just 499 cars were built in this unusual spec, and you can be sure that there are rather fewer of them around today.

“I was born in Poland, and BMWs were always in my nature,” he explains. “I used to live close to the German border when I was a teenager in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and I would always see E34s, E36s and E38s tuned up in proper German style. Low and wide, wheels with crazy-wide lips, big Schnitzer or Cobra square exhausts… and always in black, with black Hellas. It was the everyday head-turner look.” When Lukas’s uncle bought a green E34 535i manual, it immediately became the fledgling enthusiast’s dream car, and when his dad got himself a 328i Touring (again, manual) then that was it, the deal was sealed. Lukas’s desires would henceforth be Bavarian, it was tightly interwoven through the family history.

“When I moved to the UK, I had various different cars but a BMW was always on my wish list,” he continues. “My first UK BMW was an E39 530d Sport which I owned for three years, before buying an E46 325i Touring that was completely mint – the seller was an enthusiast who’d had it all resprayed, and it was sitting super-low on Bilsteins and H&R springs over BBS LMs.” It was a very cool Touring, but it had already been ‘done’ by the former owner and Lukas wanted something he could put his own stamp on – as well as having a little more power – and this box was ticked by the acquisition of an E46 M3 Convertible. It’s fair to say that his BMW adventures were blossoming healthily by this point, and joining the M3 Cutters forum spurred him on to carry out more and more mods… but ultimately, as the father of two children, the M3 was just proving too small to be practical. And what’s the logical answer when you need a larger vehicle to ferry the family about?

No, don’t say SUV. The correct answer is ‘estate car’. Don’t worry, Lukas fell into the same trap and bought himself a Mercedes ML63, followed by an X5 M Sport, but the yearning for a more traditionally shaped car with a petrol engine and a manual gearbox was proving too strong… and so the hunt was on. “At first I was looking for a two-door E30, as I had the idea to swap in an M60 or an M52,” he says, “but it quickly became apparent that in the UK you need to spend £8-10k, so I started looking at the German and Polish markets. I found a few E30s that looked interesting, but when I was on the way to see one my brother sent me a link to this E34 Touring, and I just had to take a look. It was a very rare spec, full history, and had only one owner from new!” The body was in average condition with a few scabs of rust, but it was all original with all the correct parts, receipts for its entire history, and with a healthy engine that pulled like a train. The gearbox was strong, it had a panoramic roof… everything about it screamed ‘Buy me!’, so that’s exactly what Lukas did.

“I left the 540i with my brother in Poland, where it had both front wings replaced and a full respray in its original Cosmos black metallic,” he says. “The diff was removed, refurbished, painted, and the ratio changed to 3.45, while the front brakes were removed and replaced with better, bigger ones from an E32 750i V12.” Some additional work was carried to get the rare wagon back to as-new condition, and then it was shipped to the UK where Lukas got it officially registered before taking care of some more belt-and-braces stuff. He changed the chain tensioner on the engine and it was also running a little hot – although not overheating – so he did some research and acquired an 80° thermostat and changed all the fluids. Then turning his attention to the chassis, Lukas replaced every single bush he possibly could with Powerflex items. And with it all legit, he started to think about modifications. Now, he didn’t want to go too nuts, given that he had a rare and original survivor that he’d just ploughed a load of money into bringing up to scratch. But at the same time, those teenage memories of OEM+ retro bruisers (back when they weren’t retro) were still looming large in his subconscious, and there were some things he just had to do.

Job one was to swap in the anti-roll bars from an E34 M5 because it makes sense with this platform, and then Lukas set about improving the exhaust system. Ordering a custom manifold and rear box from MTG Motorsport, the centre resonators were eliminated along with the cats, replaced by a welded X-pipe which provides a gloriously bassy rumble at high revs but isn’t too intrusive when he’s just trundling around town with the family on board. Then it was time to tackle arguably the most important part of the build: the wheels and suspension. With those vivid memories of youth demanding wide and shiny wheels filling out low-slung arches, there was a clear plan in place here. “I chose the new ‘Extreme Low’ BR Series coilovers from BC Racing to begin with,” he says, “and fitted a set of OZ Mito II wheels. Given the self-levelling rear suspension, it wasn’t exactly a quick-and-easy install, but with the help of Alex Wright (owner of the lowest static yellow E36 Coupé), we removed the self-levelling and looped the system. The front wasn’t easy either, as we had to cut and weld the new BC collars onto the struts, but we got there!” he grins.

After running static for a year or so, Lukas was keen to go lower to achieve the look he desired, although he was mindful that he didn’t want to be risking smashing his sump off on every journey, so a solution had to be formulated. The engine was duly raised up on SS Autowerks mounts and a custom steel sump guard fitted, and while he was bolting and unbolting stuff Lukas couldn’t stop thinking about his dream wheels. “It was a long route, I didn’t know I’d have to be building them from scratch,” he laughs. “After searching in vain for a set of AC Schnitzer centres, I found Neil (owner of the cleanest E36 M3 ’Vert in the UK – @m3_nut on Insta) who had a full set of ACS Type IIs – but the offset, sizes and colour weren’t right so I had to strip them all down. The centres were resprayed by The Wheel Specialists, and I ordered two inner barrels and two 4.25” lips from Felgenfuchs in Germany. The end results are amazing – the fronts are 9.75”-wide with 3.75” lips, and the rears are 11.25” with 4.25” lips. With just the right tyre stretch, the car drives amazing and is safe even at high speed.”

With his ideal wheels finally sorted, Lukas couldn’t help noticing that the car still wasn’t as low as he’d imagined, so there was only one thing for it: air. And given the high-quality coilovers that he’d already put so much effort into custom-fitting to the modified BMW 540i E34, he had the perfect base to build a system to his own specs. A set of bags were purchased from OCD, along with 3H management by Air Lift, and with the help of Carl at Studio Incar it was all fitted to get the wagon airing out like a champ. Carl had previously contributed to the project by fitting an Alcantara headlining, and now he was drafted in to build a full audio and air install. “I like to keep an OEM look, so the manifold, amp and air tank are hiding in the spare wheel well,” says Lukas. “I chose a Becker Indianapolis radio/CD, which uses the same amber-colour lights as standard so it blends with the dash and looks smart.”

The interior was further freshened up with a Nardi steering wheel, borrowed from an E36 and chosen as one of the few airbag-equipped options in the Nardi oeuvre. “A friend of mine found the wheel on an E36 forum,” he explains. “It was in average condition; the wood was immaculate but the leather was tired, so I sent it for a retrim. I also plan to change the light wood colour to a dark wood finish to match the rest of the interior, as I haven’t seen that done before.”

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It’s the attention to detail that really sets this build apart and the more you look the more you find. Everything Lukas has done has been carried out with the utmost care, all remaining respectful of the fact that this is a rare car that came to him in very original condition. It’s a cruiser, a family wagon, a show-stopper, and a legacy for his children. And in certain quarters, it turns more heads than a Ferrari F40 or a Miura ever could.

Tech Spec: Modified BMW 540i

Engine & Transmission:

4.0-litre V8 M60B40, Wokke chip, limiter removed, SS Autowerks engine mounts, custom MTG Motorsport exhaust manifold, custom de-cat exhaust system with MTG rear box. Getrag six-speed manual gearbox, E60 545i short-shift, differential refurbished and powder coated, 3.45 final drive

Power & Torque:

326hp and 354lb ft

Chassis:

9.75×18” (front) and 11.25×18” (rear) AC Schnitzer Type II Racing wheels with 3.75” (front) and 4.25” (rear) lips, 225/30 (front) and 245/30 (rear) tyres, BC Racing BR Series ‘Extreme Low’ coilovers with custom OCD airbags and Air Lift Performance 3H management, E34 M5 front and rear anti-roll bars, Powerflex bushes throughout, SS Autowerks strut brace, custom Swagier sump guard, E32 750i front brakes

Exterior:

Cosmos black metallic, OEM M Tech styling, smoked Hella headlights, new fog lights and OEM rear lights

Interior:

Black leather interior with Sport seats, retrimmed E36 Nardi airbag steering wheel, Alcantara headlining, Becker Indianapolis radio/CD, Hertz/Becker speaker upgrades and audio/air install by Studio Incar

Source

June 28, 2021
TOP 10 BRITISH CAR ICONS

Except there’s a twist to our top 10 British car icons list. The first five represent the hilariously expensive and the final five represent the cars with huge modifying potential.

The phrase ‘British Motor Industry’, once something that elicited great national pride, is often bandied around as a bit of a joke these days. It flares up pub bants with memories of the woeful Morris Marina and Austin Allegro, along with rattly Triumph Heralds, clapped-out Delboy Reliant vans and rusty Land Rover Freelanders with extravagantly weeping head gaskets. But let’s not allow that sort of broad-brush negativity spoil things: countless iconic and magnificent cars have been built in Britain, from the Mini to the E-Type, the MGB to the Lotus Seven and so many more besides; there’s a reason why all the F1 teams want to be based in Britain, why venerable brands like Morgan survive in their little timeworn niches, why foreign ownership hasn’t diluted the magnificence of Rolls-Royce or Bentley. Britain is, and always has been, bloody good at making bloody good cars. So here we’ve gathered together a top-ten of our favourites – the stars, the legends, the ones we all want to take home and have a little naughty fun with. And there’s a twist: the first five are the icons, the unattainable and heinously expensive cars that most of us will have to settle for just having a bedroom-wall poster of… but the next five are the mod masters, cars that you can go out and find for reasonable money. Cool, fun, interesting and quirky British-built cars, just crying out for some entertaining mods. Ladies and gentlemen, pour a quick cup of Earl Grey and start your engines, it’s our top 10 British car icons.

Top 5 hilariously expensive British cars

McLaren F1

In the supercar arena of the early 1990s, various manufacturers had been teetering and tap-dancing around the 200mph mark: Ferrari’s F40 could do 201mph, Porsche’s 959 wasn’t far behind at 197mph, and in 1992 Jaguar took the ‘fastest production car in the world’ title by managing to squeeze 212mph out of the XJ220. But then McLaren casually strolled in with its new F1, gave everyone a bit of side-eye, stubbed out a ciggie, and chalked up a top speed of 240mph. This was, frankly, completely absurd. There was no way any other car-maker could come close to that.

Of course, McLaren didn’t just pop out of nowhere with this; behind the scenes, in top secret, they’d been endurance-testing a super-high-performance variant of the BMW S70/2 V12 engine, cunningly hidden inside an E34 M5 Touring mule. The project’s mastermind, ex-Formula One engineer Gordon Murray, envisioned a pioneering machine with a central driver’s seat, the world’s first road car to have a carbon fibre monocoque, built without compromise for ultimate efficiency and performance. The engine bay was infamously lined with gold leaf, purely for its thermal properties. The bespoke toolkit was cast from titanium. And the whole point of the F1 was that it could be everyday-usable, as well as being the fastest car in the world. It had a 10-disc Kenwood audio system, and air-con, and even a tailored golf bag. This wasn’t just a supercar, it was the ultimate road car. And in every important way, it still is.

Price today: £15,000,000

TVR Speed 12

TVR was always known for its uncompromising builds, fusing outlandish and otherworldly curves with shouty, angry engines, and there was never space for anything as lame as ABS, airbags, or traction control. And the Speed 12? This was the most uncompromising of the lot. Taking the slinky Cerbera as a base, it formed a test-bed for a potential GT1 racer – something that never came to fruition; the Speed 12 GTS did compete in a few rounds of the 1998 FIA GT1 Championship, but the rules changed rendering the car obsolete. The sole survivor exists now as a bonkers and unique creation; under that rampantly slatted bonnet lurks a 7.7-litre V12 – effectively two Speed Six units on a shared crank, but the whole is far more than the sum of its parts – reputedly good for over 1,000bhp, although official figures were never forthcoming. TVR’s dyno was only rated to 1,000bhp and the car kept ripping it to pieces.

TVR’s then bossman, Peter Wheeler ultimately concluded that the Speed 12 was undrivable as a road car, it was just too powerful. So the whole project was scrapped. However… in 2003, TVR mischievously put an advert in Auto Trader for a Speed 12, registered W112 BHG, saying that they’d rebuild one of the decommissioned prototypes and sell it to a TVR fan. The buyer had to be interviewed personally by Wheeler to make sure they were suitable and, since the original bodies had all been destroyed, W112 BHG used a genuine GT racer body. As TVRs go, this is very much the rarest of the rare. Although if you’ve got deep pockets, a company named TR Supercars has also recently fabbed-up a modern twin-turbo prototype of its own…

Price today: £1,200,000 (TR Speed 12 Turbo)

Lotus Evija

Lotus has a long and distinguished history of crafting desirable and swift machines, fusing sumptuous design with eager performance; OK, the older ones usually smell faintly of glue and have bizarre gearbox choices or Marina door handles, but you can’t put a price on their iconic cachet.

So here’s a polarising thing. If you’re the sort of purist who feels that the very essence of the added-lightness Lotus ethos resides in a sylph-like Elan or featherweight Elise, the idea of a 1,680kg goliath wearing Chapman’s iconic nameplate may stick in the craw. But try to forget about the weight – it’s the power-to-weight that’s crucial here. This mould-breaking hypercar is an EV, powered by four electric motors, one in each wheel. Peak power is an eye-watering 1,970bhp (yes, you read that correctly), enabling a 0-62mph dash in well under 3 seconds, 0-186mph in under 9 seconds, and a top whack comfortably beyond 200mph. We’re looking at a full carbon chassis, magnesium wheels, carbon-ceramic brakes, the works. Is it a traditional Lotus? Er, no, not really. But if this sort of lunacy is the future of the brand, then count us in with a boisterous ‘Pip pip, tally ho’.

Price today: £2,000,000

Ariel Atom 500

The Ariel Atom is a hilarious creation. Whoever thought of bolting the engine from a Honda Civic Type R onto the back of a tangle of scaffolding to form an ultralight road-legal track car was some kind of twisted genius. These things have become modern icons among performance car enthusiasts, as they’re built entirely without compromise to be ludicrously rapid at all times; there’s a fella who we regularly see doing his weekly shop at the local Sainsbury’s in a Nomad (which is essentially an Atom on stilts), tying the shopping bags to the rollcage, and that’s heroic behaviour.

And even more ingenious than the standard Atom formula, and far more twisted, is the Atom 500. This features a bespoke 3.0-litre V8 which is basically two Suzuki superbike engines running off a common crank (sort of – it’s fiendishly complicated), and this gives it 475bhp. In a car that weighs 550kg. How bonkers is that? It’s got a power-to-weight ratio of 864bhp-per-tonne, which is double that of a Bugatti Veyron, and it’ll do 0-62mph in 2.2 seconds. It’s basically a GP2 race car with number plates, and in a world where EV hypercars are reframing everything we thought we knew about acceleration, this car comprehensively proves that petrol engines can still play that game too. We love that this sort of thing is allowed.

Price today: £200,000

Jaguar XJ220

There’s a lot to love about Jaguar’s XJ220, from its ludicrous speed capability and supercar-royalty status to the magnificent design of its pretty body. But the most intriguing thing about the XJ220 was that it had completely the wrong engine, and that really annoyed people. When the notion of a new Jaguar V12-powered supercar with all-wheel-drive was mooted in 1990, the waiting list was four times oversubscribed with 1,400 customers paying a £50,000 deposit… but then quite a few of them demanded their money back when Jaguar suddenly realised that the V12 couldn’t meet emissions regs, as well as being too heavy, and the AWD system would be too complex, so they decided to make it RWD and V6-powered instead. A lot of potential buyers got quite cross about that.

However, those people really missed out, as the XJ220’s twin-turbo V6 was a howling lunatic of a thing. Derived from the Austin Rover V64V – as seen in a different setup and state of tune in the Group B Metro 6R4 rally cars – it allowed the XJ220 to be, briefly, the fastest production car in the world at 212mph. Produced in collaboration with Tom Walkinshaw Racing, the project was aimed squarely at the Ferrari F40 and the Porsche 959, offering comparable performance combined with much more luxurious interior appointments.

The XJ220 is a proper hero: it may have a Metro engine and Rover 200 taillights, but it really was a world-class demonstration of British ingenuity.

Price today: £450,000

Top 5 British cars with modifying potential

Ford Escort XR3i (Mk4)

There were a lot of fast Fords we wanted to slot in here, but given that most RS and Cosworth models were actually assembled elsewhere in Europe, we had to cast our minds back to the original boy racer. Scourge of the seafronts, legend of the traffic light grand prix, the XR3 was a true 1980s everyman hero; resplendent in its cloverleaf alloys and jazzy stripy seats, with boisterous bolt-on spoilers and the obligatory spotlights, it was everything a Ford fan wanted at the time, pre-modified by Ford and ready to rock.

Since the Mk3 platform was so radically different from the rear-drive Escorts that came before it, Ford played a blinder by deciding to launch the sporting variant at the same time as the everyday models. The XR3 shared the lesser three-door’s bodyshell, and added ventilated front discs behind characterful cloverleaf wheels, along with the in-your-face spoiler and body addenda. The 1597cc CVH had a twin-choke Weber carb and produced a handy 96bhp, enabling it to tear to 60mph in a smidge over nine seconds. In the early days of the hot hatch era this was heady stuff, and the buying public lapped it up – over 11,000 XR3s were sold in 1981 alone, and the following year Ford improved it further by adding a five-speed all-synchro gearbox. In 1983, Ford’s Special Vehicle Engineering (SVE) department decided to have a crack at it – the result was the XR3i, the extra letter denoting the new addition of Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection. This enabled a hike to 105bhp, the 0-60mph time dropping to 8.5 seconds, and the suspension was revised and lowered by SVE along with gear ratios being altered. Now the hot Mk3 was a genuine 120mph car, and when the Mk4 XR3i arrived in 1986 with its smoother styling, the world had a new true-blue hot hatch hero.

Price today: £8,000

Top 5 mods: Koni adjustable coilovers, Magnex exhaust system, K&N induction kit, Kent cams, rear window louvres

Vauxhall Astra VXR Nurburgring

Darling of Ellesmere Port, the Vauxhall Astra has been a staple of British street furniture for as long as anyone can comfortably remember. And of course we’re not just recommending a base-model 1.6 here. We’re not even touting the hooligan-spec VXR. No, the one we’ve really got our crosshairs locked onto is the VXR Nürburgring Edition.

Never before has a single factory-fitted bolt-on mod changed a car so dramatically. The regular Astra VXR, launched in 2005, was already a fairly manic thing, with 240bhp-odd and an aggressively firm chassis setup. The Nürburgring Edition was arguably, on paper, something akin to a cynical marketing exercise – a set of white wheels and some stickers, along with a modest 15bhp power hike. Could that really justify the £1,575 premium over the standard version? Yes, very much so – and it’s all down to the Remus exhaust that Vauxhall fitted, which pops and crackles like a rally car on the overrun, and blasts what sounds like shotgun fire out of the back end every time you change gear. In a world of fashionable pop-and-bang maps this may not sound all that impressive, but let’s not forget that Vauxhall let these shouty little creations off the forecourt with a warranty. Fingers in your ears, grandpa!

Price today: £5,000

Top 5 mods: KW coilovers, Whiteline ARBs, K-Sport big brake kit, Regal inlet manifold, Forge intercooler

MINI Cooper S (R53)

Yep, the badge may be owned by BMW, but these things are still proudly hammered together in Britain. And while there are a lot of people out there who say ‘it’s not a proper Mini,’ simply because modern MINIs are quite a lot bigger than classic Minis were, such people can be safely ignored. All of the correct DNA is in place, it’s built in Oxford, and it’s as appropriate as mass-market transportation as the original Mini was back then. Times change. We need stuff like airbags and decent-sized disc brakes now, the new MINI allows these to fit, that’s why they’ve grown up a bit.

Anyway, the cream of the crop was the perky little R53 Cooper S. 2nd-gen versions were turbocharged, but it’s the original 1st-gen Cooper S that turned a generation of fledgling tuners onto the thrills of supercharging. That meant when it came to stuffing it with a few more horses, something as simple as a reduced ’charger pulley would give you oodles more torque and even improved economy – how smart is that? – and, as countless owners have since discovered, a set of coilovers and a chunky rear anti-roll bar turned it into a balls-out track weapon. They’re getting really quite affordable now too, plus there’s plenty of them about and the aftermarket for them is just huge.

Price today: £3,000

Top 5 mods: Reduced supercharger pulley, Orranje Stealth Intake, non run-flat tyres, lightweight wheels, coilover suspension

All mods available from Orranje Performance Ltd orranje.co.uk

Honda Civic Type R EP3

There are few performance bargains quite as alluring today as the EP3-generation Civic Type R. And yes, we know that Honda is a Japanese company and we’re creating a top 10 British car icons list here – but did you also know that all the EP3s were built in Swindon? It’s true. In fact, even the JDM-spec cars (with their Championship White paint and LSDs) were built over here and shipped to Japan. So yes, this iconic Japanese tearaway is a true-blue Brit.

The legacy of the Type R models is a well-trodden path within these pages. The EK9 had been a Japan-only model, but the EP3 brought the Type R lunacy to the European masses: its manic K20A2 motor offered 197bhp and, while there wasn’t a lot of torque low down, it was all about the revs; VTEC kicked in at 5,500rpm, and from then on the scenery went distinctly blurry. The handling was wonderfully agile (and facelifted cars had revised steering, which had been a bit woolly on earlier cars), and the aftermarket ensured that these hot hatches were very well catered for: you don’t necessarily need to throw a lot of power at an EP3, as your point-to-point times are easily reduced with chassis and suspension tweaks. Although if big power is your bag, the K20 responds very well to supercharging…

Price today: £3,000

Top 5 mods: SuperPro ARBs, Hardrace camber arms, ITG induction, Skunk2 drop-in cams, M2 side-kicker exhaust

Bentley Turbo R

The Turbo R is no ordinary Bentley. Whereas many manufacturers may deploy the letter ‘R’ on their hot models to mean ‘Racing’ (Honda do it, and Skoda, and assorted others), in this instance it stands for ‘Roadholding’. You see, this car’s predecessor, the Mulsanne Turbo, was an old-money scoundrel of a thing: a mighty turbo strapped to the equally mighty 6.75-litre V8, with the ageing chassis design expected to cope. This went exactly as well as you’d imagine it would. But the Turbo R was a significant evolutionary step: taking all of that amusing horsepower and treacle-rich torque, the chassis was substantially revised to deal with it. The Citroën-licensed hydropneumatic suspension setup was augmented by a 50% increase in roll stiffness, thanks to much thicker anti-roll bars and increased damping rates. The rear subframe was triangulated with a Panhard rod, and all of this was allied to the Mulsanne’s soft spring rates. Why? To ensure that it could handle like a hooligan on demand, while still being as comfortable and sumptuously cosseting as a Bentley should be when you’re just wafting around. This Jekyll-and-Hyde approach was a roaring success, and the Turbo R has gone down in history as something which really was just a jolly good idea. With close to 300bhp, the acceleration almost defies physics; the chassis is unexpectedly agile, and it’s got all of the luxurious accoutrements you’d expect of a Bentley. What could possibly go wrong*?

*er… quite a lot actually. And it’ll all be very expensive.

Price today: £9,000

Top 5 mods: Hi-Spec big brake kit, Quaife LSD, custom Powerflow exhaust, custom Air Lift Performance suspension, tweed jacket

Source

June 25, 2021
MODIFIED FIESTA ST200: THE PERFECT STORM

M-Sport styling plus Storm Grey paint plus big power make this modified Fiesta ST200 one of the best Fiestas in the UK.

An obsession with cars is ingrained in many of us from an early age and stays with us throughout our entire adult lives. Some of us even have a loyalty to a favourite marque, usually passed down as a family tradition much like a football team or political party. Other people see cars merely as A to B transport, and much prefer going down the pub!

Unbelievably the owner of this highly modified Fiesta ST200 was for most of his life, one of the latter. “I work at Ford but I was never a car guy at all,” explains Burger (a nickname from school), “all of my interests revolved around people, the pub, and a social life.” A fateful day whilst on his way to work at the Ford Daventry parts centre however, found him switched on to the world of turbochargers and body-kits like a man possessed! “I saw a Focus RS500 on my commute,” he remembers, “and something about it suddenly ignited an interest in cars… I’d not seen anything like it before.” Burger was so inspired, that a brand new Focus ST was swiftly bought and a virtual pub – an online car group forum – helped him school up on the slippery slide of car modifying. “The ST ended up modded to within an inch of its life,” he laughs, “a 400bhp engine and murdered-out black bodywork made it really stand out… but it was an RS that I really wanted.”

Four years of utterly enjoyable ST ownership eventually made way for a Mk2 Focus RS in Ultimate Green. Like the Focus before it, this was also tweaked to over 400bhp and given some trick styling touches to make it even more eye-catching and loud than it came out of the factory. “I absolutely loved that car,” Burger reminisces, “but as time went on I realised I’d bought an investment vehicle, and started worrying about driving it so the thing ended up just sitting in the garage most of the time”. As we continue to talk, it’s clear that Burger buys cars to drive them and have fun in, not to sit under a cover… so the itch was on for something a bit more useable, and chuckable. “When I was young, my uncle gave me his 1275GT Mini,” he explains, “that go-kart feeling never really left me, and I started hankering after a proper little hot hatch”. At the same time, Ford announced the launch of the Fiesta ST200 and were touting it as ‘the fastest ever production Fiesta’, so he decided to take a closer look.

“It looked good on paper,” he continues, “but I was worried that I’d buy one, only for Ford to release a Fiesta RS soon after”. Luckily, his work contacts gave him access to Ford top brass, who when asked “should I buy a Fiesta ST200 or should I hold out for an RS version,” answered, “you should probably buy an ST200!” With that information, Burger decided to press the trigger on a brand new ST200 after all, with the mind-set of – “if Ford won’t build a Fiesta RS, then I’ll have to build my own.”

The car you see today, is a 2017 model and like all ST200s was Storm Grey out of the factory. First impressions weren’t ideal because after owning fast Focuses, its performance came as a bit of a disappointment to him. “The Focus had twice the power I guess,” he shrugs, “so the Fiesta ST200 felt flat in comparison.” Rather than mucking about, he decided to upgrade all of the mechanical aspects of the car as well as give it a great big chunk of extra power, all in one big hit. “After lots of research into turbos and power packages,” continues Burger, “I was only really impressed with Charlie at Peron – most power upgrade kits have some mediocre parts thrown in, but Peron’s turbo was good, their intercooler was good, and their ECU also made sense.” Not being keen on hybrid turbos, Burger opted for a Garrett GTX2860R – a dual ball bearing unit complete with billet compressor wheel, and in theory able to achieve his desired goal of 350bhp. “I drove the car up there standard, and drove it away two weeks later with 347bhp at the wheels running 1.6-bar,” he says, “so I was really happy, but being a small engine it’s delivery is different to the Focus – you have to rev it and drive it quite hard to unlock its potential”. We’re still amazed by the potential of the little 1.6-litre EcoBoost engine, but Burger has even bigger goals now. “The plan is now 400bhp,” he continues, “so we’ve forged it, done the block mod, and I’m 800 miles into running it in before we turn the boost up and try to reach that figure”. Sensibly at the same time as the power-ups, he had KW’s finest street coil-overs fitted, a Kaaz LSD to help put the power down through corners, as well as proper brakes courtesy of AP Racing which stop on a sixpence, and help protect what has been a very substantial investment in the bodywork.

“The whole concept was to create the Fiesta RS that Ford never built,” explains Burger, “it had to have an OEM look and finish, and when I found a guy down South who’d got a genuine WRC bodykit, I thought I’d hit the jackpot”. In the flesh however, it was obvious the kit was just too wide and extreme for a road car to pull off. But the chap had a load of other trick parts, all from his own Fiesta WRC project which had already eaten up an eye-watering £60,000 of his cash. “He could take it no further,” nods Burger, “so I bought the original carbon fibre S2000 rear spoiler off him, as well as the genuine Asfalto racing wheels which were made especially for M-Sport by OZ Racing.” As sexy as they were, unfortunately they weren’t made for a production Fiesta, being 5×135 fitment as opposed to the 4×108 ST200 fitment. “M-Sport used custom fabricated hubs on the rally cars,” he explains, “but you can’t buy them so I spent four months researching what could be done.” Despite most people telling him to just buy a different set of copy wheels, Burger persisted. After some great advice and help from motorsport engineer Alan Crossley, it was decided that re-drilling the standard hubs from 4×108 to 5×108 and then getting a set of one inch billet adaptors from Anembo Engineering to mate the 5×108 to 5×135, was the way forward. “It might sound simple,” laughs Burger, “but that took four months of head scratching and effort.”

With the wheels on the bodywork could start in earnest, and essentially the whole thing was built around those alloys. An M-Sport kit was picked out as suiting the car the best, so trusted body-shop Motion Factory Finishes got to work cutting out the Fiesta’s almost brand new rear quarter panels to accommodate the arches, and customising pretty much every part of the kit by chopping and changing other non-M-Sport parts to make it truly unique. “I didn’t make life easy for the guys as I kept chopping and changing my mind on rear diffusers and bumpers”, admits Burger, “in some cases after getting a perfect fitment, I’d change my idea on a panel which then meant refabricating areas or in some cases starting afresh!” Ollie and Alex’s patience was tested to the core, and it’s testament to their professionalism that they worked through it like troopers – even the paint was a pain! “It’s amazing how hard the flat grey paint is to match properly,” continues Burger, “but I was adamant we kept the colour as it’s a unique feature of the ST200 and I think it looks great.” We couldn’t agree more – there are so many touches on this car like the custom 3D printed badging, wrapped roof, and the usually textured black plastics such as on the door mirrors and front grille are now smoothed and painted matt black.

Unsurprisingly, at shows it gets a lot of attention – it’s one of those cars that the longer you look at it, the more you spot. “The biggest compliment I’ve had so far,” says Burger proudly, “is people telling me it looks like it came from the factory… one guy presumed it was a special edition from Ford!” RSOC National Day also saw a bit of love from Fifth Gear presenter and all round game girl Vicki Butler Henderson, who couldn’t resist sitting in the – for now – standard interior. “She really liked it,” he smiles, “but it isn’t just a show queen.” His favourite annual event is a road trip through Scotland with a bunch of car mates – taking in the beautiful sights and letting the go-kart chassis of the Fiesta really come to life. “I absolutely love that trip,” he enthuses, “it’s the highlight of my year, and is the perfect environment for the go-kart modified Fiesta ST200… it’s just a huge buzz.” Well, he may have been late to the party with this car modifying lark, but Burger really does sound like a true petrol-head these days, “oh yes,” he nods, “it took me a while, but I think with this build, I’ve certainly made up for lost time!” You’re never too late to start, and given the quality and presence of this modified Fiesta ST200, we hope there’s plenty more to come from him in the future too.

From Fast Ford. Words: Ben Birch. Photos: Liam Hart & Dave Varley.

Tech Spec: Modified Fiesta ST200

Engine:

Garrett Gen2 GTX2860R turbo, Nortech Performance GTX tubular manifold, Nortech 4-port auxiliary fuel kit, Peron Garrett intercooler, Peron/Nortech hi-flow de-cat race down pipe, Peron/Turbosmart external waste-gate, Peron diverter valve, Peron silicone boost and inlet hoses, Peron hard pipe, Peron Stage 4 ECU software Peron/ITG hi-flow CAIS, Wiseco forged pistons, K1 forged con-rods, Piper exhaust system, Mishimoto oil catch can

Power:

347bhp (at the wheels)

Transmission:

KAAZ LSD, Cobb torque mount, VUDU short shifter

Suspension:

KW V3 coilovers, Summit front and rear strut braces, Powerflex poly bushes

Brakes:

AP Racing 4-pot front brake calipers, 330mm discs on Reyland bells

Wheels & Tyres:

K.Pierce Co. bespoke 5-stud hubs, Anembo Engineering bespoke hub adapters, 9x18in M-Sport/Oz Racing Super Turismo Rally Asfalto S2000 wheels, 225/40R18 Michelin PS4 tyres

Exterior:

M-Sport (TGST) WRC body kit, M-Sport CF R5 rear spoiler and brackets, CM Composite WRC style bonnet vents, Maxton Design rear bumper/diffuser, Monkey Wrench bespoke custom headlights, Mark One livery, DC3D bespoke badging, DMB overlays, Billet Badges bespoke emblem, MFF (follow the factory) vinyl elements, Ultimate windscreens MK glazing

Interior:

P3 multi gauge in driver’s air vent

Source

June 24, 2021