Packing a meaty supercharged V8 and a unique manual gearbox swap, Dale Masterman’s classic racer-inspired modified Jaguar S-Type R is the tastiest way to tear up the tarmac!

Feature taken from Fast Car magazine. Words: Dan Sherwood. Photos: Swallows Racing

When you think of tyre-shredding performance saloons most of us get images of brutish Bavarian autobahn blasters springing to mind. Cars like BMW’s brawny M5 or Mercedes understated yet ballistic E55 AMG. But the obvious kraut cruisers aren’t the only options for obliterating the national speed limit or scorching the asphalt of your favourite circuit – for the more discerning hoonigans out there, such as Dale Masterman, the marketing mogul of detailing gurus Meguiar’s, there is another, more elegant choice, one that hails from our own green and pleasant shores.

“To many people, the Jaguar S-Type is seen as a bit of an old man’s car,” laughs 32-year-old Dale. “The sort of thing you see wafting around the countryside on a sunny weekend with a grey-haired driver clad in string-backed gloves and a flat cap behind the wheel.”

And, in a way, he’s right. The S-Type was designed to hark back to the Mk2 of the sixties. It’s bold curves, central oval grille and quad headlights were all elements lifted straight from its swinging forebear. However, where the original was a coveted performance saloon, favoured by both the criminal underworld and police force alike – the former for its ability to effortlessly whisk a crafty tea-leaf and up to four other balaclava-clad henchmen away from the scene of the crime, the latter for its speed and poise to try and catch them – the S-Type has never really enjoyed such a desirable reputation, especially in its more mundane powerplant options.

“I’d always loved the look of the sixties’ original and felt that the S-Type was a great modern equivalent that could look awesome with a bit more attitude,” says Dale. “So when the big bosses at Meguiar’s tasked my colleague Tom and I to compete in another project car build-off, I knew exactly what car to choose.”

For those that have been living under a rock the last year or so, the original Tom Vs Dale modified showdown saw the pair of Meguiar’s marketing bods lock horns in an epic battle of the builds. Tom’s steed was a Skeete-kitted Renault 5 GT Turbo, while Dale’s weapon of choice was an air-slammed Mercedes Benz 220.

“The Merc ticked all the boxes for me and was modified to be low and slow with tonnes of retro cool,” Dale remembers. “That’s always been my style really, but with the latest competition I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and focus much more on performance.”

Which brings us back around to that slightly strange choice of motor. If he wanted a speedy saloon, why not pick a M car, or revisit his Mercedes roots?

“As well as having cool retro looks, Jaguar also built a version of the S-Type which came with a supercharged 4.2-litre V8,” Dale grins. “Called the S-Type R it packs 409bhp straight out of the box and was a genuine rival for anything that came out of Germany at the time.”

Needless to say, that is the very car that ended up in Dale’s possession and has been transformed into the bonkers creation you see here.

Originally a completely stock 2002 model in grey, Dale’s vision was to build a car that took inspiration from the classic Jaguar race cars that he’d seen blasting around the track at the Goodwood revival. And he knew exactly the place that could help him achieve his vision…

“Swallows Racing in Bristol are one of the country’s top Jaguar specialists that not only sell cars, but are also involved in numerous Jaguar race series competing with both modern and historic machinery,” Dale reveals. “So it was a no brainer to hook up with them to build the Jaguar S-Type R.”

Working closely with Swallows’ main man Tom Robinson,  Dale concocted a recipe to add more than a hint of spice and a whole heap of race-inspired aggression to the Jag, and first on the list was sorting the suspension.

“My usual choice of suspension is to just slam the body as low as possible on air ride,” Dale confesses. “But as this was going to be a track car for the road, we went to suspension maestros Bilstein to see what they could do,” Dale says.

A custom set of two-way coilovers using uprated Eibach springs was created and means that the Jag can sit low enough to satisfy Dale’s tastes, yet also benefit from a wide range of damping adjustability to ensure it can tackle any track.

“The seats were next,” says Dale. “We needed more supportive seats for when the car will be driven on the limit on a circuit, and to also give the car a more race-inspired look and feel, so we went to Cobra to develop our own racing bucket seats.”

Based on Cobra’s FIA-approved Sebring fixed bucket design, Dale opted for black cloth with red accents and custom embroidery including his name on the driver’s seat and ‘Barry’ on the passenger seat, in honour of Meguiar’s president Barry Meguiar.

“With the Scroth harnesses the seats really hold you in place and, combined with the Motamec suede-rimmed steering wheel and the wild bolt-in custom rollcage made by Caged Laser Engineering, it really feels like you’re strapped into a thoroughbred racer,” reckons Dale.

But the car’s opulent leather and wood grain interior wasn’t the only standard part that found its way into the bin, as the stock 19in wheels were also due for an upgrade.

“I wanted a set of rims that evoked the feel of the classic racing wheels of the Jaguar D-Type speedster,” says Dale. “And to achieve this we designed a custom set with Midlands-based wheel experts Image.”

Measuring a girthy 9x19in at the front and 10x19in at the rear and shod with sticky Nankang AR1 semi-slick tyres, the new rims, complete with period knock-off hub nut spinners, allow for a much bigger footprint at each corner to give Dale maximum grip in the twisties. However, they were anything but a straightforward fit.

“We knew that the wider rims would never fit under the stock rear arches, so the car went off to bodywork specialists The Motor Works in Gloucester for a set of custom rear arches and a full respray in glorious British Racing Green with extra green pearl,” he remembers.

Looking at the pictures, it’s hard to tell that there’s been much in the way of body modifications to the Jag, as the finished product has been executed so well that it could’ve easily come from the factory that way, but they also add up to give a much cleaner and more menacing feel.

As well as the custom wider rear aches, which were made by grafting on the flared lips of a spare set of OEM front wings, the other subtle body mods include deleting the rear door handles, smoothing the bumpers, de-badging the front grille and removing the stock rear spoiler.

“I wanted to keep a classic feel for the bodywork and let the paintwork and the original lines do the talking,” Dale says. “Combined with the fatter wheels and the classic racing touches like the taped headlights, numbered grille and door roundel, I think it really works well.”

With the interior and exterior makeovers complete the Jag could be returned to Swallows where the team could work their magic giving this big cat some bigger, sharper claws.

“Being supercharged from the factory means performance gains can be made fairly simply by fitting a smaller supercharger pulley to gain more boost,” Dale smiles. “However, a remap of the ECU is also needed to ensure the fueling can be increased to match.”

As well as the pulley upgrade, Swallows also added a custom hardpipe induction kit with Pipercross cone filter, a set of racing injectors, a custom stainless steel exhaust system and a fully integrated racing ECU, mapped by The Tuning Shed.

“The result of the engine tweaks is a meaty 500bhp and 500lb ft of torque,” Dale confirms. “It’s a proper beast now and I can’t wait to be able to unleash it on the track!”

But even with 500bhp on tap, how much fun can you have in an sloppy-shifting automatic?

“That was precisely what Tom at Swallows was thinking too,” laughs Dale. “So to remedy the situation he and the guys decided to carry out a manual gearbox conversion.”

Unlike many other cars where swapping auto for manual is a regular occurrence, this particular conversion had never been carried out on a road legal S-Type before, so Swallows were breaking new ground.

The swap began by removing the stock auto ‘box along with the power-sapping torque converter before replacing them with a six-speed ZF manual gearbox from a diesel S-Type and a custom billet clutch and flywheel. The pedal box from the manual diesel S-Type was also used and modified to suit the new application, before programming the racing ECU to work with the new transmission parts.

“The Maxx racing ECU was an essential component for the manual swap,” says Dale. “The factory ECU is very dated now and would put the engine into low power limp mode if it didn’t detect the stock gearbox. But being fully customisable, the new ECU can run with the new parts no problem, however it was quite a challenge to get all the electronics to work together seamlessly and retain all the functions needed for road use too.”

And the result is simply awesome. Combined with the bespoke bodywork, the track-inspired interior and the muscular engine, the slick-shifting manual has transformed Dale’s Jag from an automotive aristocrat into a dapper street and circuit scrapper that turns heads wherever it goes, and that’s something to relish!

Tech Spec: Modified Jaguar S-Type R

Engine:

4.2-litre, 8-cyl, 32v supercharged V8, custom hardpipe induction kit with Pipercross cone filter, uprated injectors, custom stainless steel exhaust system, Maxx racing ECU

Performance:

500bhp+ 500lb ft+

Transmission:

6-speed ZF manual gearbox conversion from a diesel S-Type, custom billet clutch and flywheel

Suspension:

Two-way custom racing suspension developed by Bilstein UK with Eibach springs

Brakes:

Standard calipers with uprated Tarox F2000 discs and pads

Wheels & Tyres:

9x19in (front) and 10x19in (rear) custom Image wheels with 265/35/19 Nankang AR1 tyres (front) and 275/35/19 Nankang AR1 tyres (rear)

Exterior:

Full respray in British Racing Green with additional green pearl, gloss black mirrors, rear spoiler delete, badge delete, smooth bumpers, racing number in grill, custom rear arches using wider front wings, rear door handle delete, red tinted rear light clusters, custom racing graphics

Interior:

Fully stripped, painted black with custom red bolt-in rollcage, Cobra Sebring bucket seat, Scroth harnesses, JVC KW-M565DBT double-din head unit and speaker system with slimline subwoofer, racing fire extinguisher, alloy footplates, retro Sparco crash helmet

Thanks:

Meguiarsuk for giving me the opportunity to build the car. Massive thank you to Swallows Racing for their huge contribution to the management and execution of the build. @thereal_patch for documenting the build! @sycographix, @themotorworks, @swallowsracing, @jaguarenthusiastsclub, @imagewheelsofficial, @tarox_brakes, @forgemotorsport, @cobraseats, @bilsteinuk, @theinstallcompany, @jvc_uk, @nankangtyreuk, @powerflexbushes, @fastcarmagazine, @clifford_uk, @cagedlaser, @players_shows, @EIBACH_SPRINGS_UK. @funkies_sihn_and_lines, @demontweeksperformance, @tuningshed, @lil_amy89

Serial Nissan modifier and professional drifter Toshiki Nagai wanted to build something different for the SEMA show. And that’s why we see him here rediscovering the joy of six with his Rocket Bunny PS13.

Feature first appeared in Fast Car magazine. Words: Dan Bevis. Photos: Jules

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-u-ust 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 black bits of rubber, and more often than not they’ve banged into a number of walls so the back bumper’s hanging off, and there’s tyre rash from tandem competitors who’ve tried their luck just a little too hard. What we’re looking at in broad terms is a wilful and celebratory disregard for purity. The antithesis to the concours scene, in which every bolt-head must be artfully aligned and every part must boast the correct serial number; with drifting, fit-for-purpose is key, and this taster-menu approach has spawned a glorious mongrel scene over the generations – cars with the wrong engines, mucked-about chassis specs, and fibreglass addenda stitched together with cable ties. Liveries change season-on-season, paint shades swap at whim, bodykit options flit back and forth as they get trashed running the wall… but what you’re seeing here, glinting beneath the Las Vegas lights in the dwindling embers of the SEMA show, is a hardcore drift weapon that’s also a pristine show-stopper. After all, you don’t get into SEMA if your car’s not appropriately pretty. So how has this confusing miracle been achieved? Well, it’s all down to its owner and creator, Toshiki Nagai. This guy is no ordinary tuner. He’s set his sights high, and nothing but the best is good enough.

“I just love S13s, they’re my favourite drift car,” he explains. “It doesn’t match the S14 or S15 in terms of body rigidity, but I like the S13 because it’s cool and sexy. At the moment I’ve got seven of them.” Can’t really argue with that, can you? And for those who may at this point be questioning the sanity of somebody who owns an entire fleet of drift-ready S-bodies and is perhaps concerned for his welfare, we should point out that Nagai-san is a fully-fledged D1 drift competitor. He’s also the driving force (quite literally) behind TN Service Kyoto, a garage whose name sends emotional ripples through car fans across Japan and beyond, so it makes sense that when he puts a car together, there’s no messing about. Show-and-go is the order of the day, and SEMA is the ideal platform to showcase how adept he and his team are at crafting world class performance machinery.

He’s certainly got the domestic-market chops to help him walk the walk, as Nagai-san has been hooning about in aspirational machinery from day one. “My first car was an FD3S Mazda RX-7, which I bought at the age of eighteen,” he says, immediately dissolving everyone in the Fast Car office into fizzing pools of jealousy as we recall the crap we were driving at that age. “After that I was driving 180SXs and Silvias for drifting, and Aristos and Soarers on the street, everything lowered on big wheels…” It’s a classic formula, something we can all relate to on a personal level, and a highly aspirational lifestyle to boot. So, fast-forwarding to the acquisition of this particular PS13, it was as much by reputation as desire that it found its way into the TN Service Kyoto fold. “Everyone knows I love an S13,” Nagai-san shrugs, “So if anyone’s got a good one for sale, I’m the one they call.” And sure enough, when he saw this car, he knew it’d make the perfect base for a top-flight SEMA build. Totally stock and completely solid, this seasoned veteran saw nothing but potential. It helped that this opportunity temporally collided with an ongoing badgering of TRA Kyoto’s Kei Miura; “I’d been pestering Miura-san for two years to create a Pandem kit for the PS13, and the dream finally came true,” he recalls, and that adds an extra layer of textural depth to this car’s brutal aesthetic. It’s not just a cool car wearing a boxfresh bodykit – the slick new lines were the result of many conversations between these two captains of automotive industry, so the finished product has an intensely personal connection.

It really is a magnificent piece of design too, isn’t it? Having seen so many types of car attended to by the Rocket Bunny team, we know what to expect from a Pandem kit: a flawless fit that neatly follows the factory lines, but massively exaggerates the arches to create a style that’s more in-keeping with an old-school Touring Car grid, accommodating fat rubber and working with updated aero to form something breath-taking. We just love the combination of the adjustable high-rise wing and the ducktail at the rear, and the almighty girth of the arches is sensational. It’s particularly cool that TN Service Kyoto opted to finish it in a two-tone colour scheme, as that’s always a winner, and it’s interesting to note that it’s been painstakingly painted on rather than wrapped.

The interior’s been treated to a full-blown assault from the spray gun too, and it’s painfully evident in here just how serious a drift machine this is: everything superfluous stripped out, countless gauges mounted in clever places, and a set of super-lightweight carbon fibre Pandem buckets. You’ll find all the necessary competition addenda, from harnesses and window nets to that serious-as-hell rollcage, and it’s evident from every inch that this machine has been primarily engineered to be used, and used hard. And yet it’s all so, so clean. A race car in lipstick, ready for a raucous night on the tiles.

There must be something pretty serious going on under the bonnet, then? Oh yes. Yes, there is… and it’s not what you’d expect to find in there either. The SR20 is long gone, having been ousted in favour of the wildcard Toyota 2JZ. This is a longitudinally-mounted 3.0-litre straight-six which usually wears twin turbos in its native environments, but in this instance it’s rocking a vast single Garrett T04 for maximum awesomeness. “I hold a D1GP professional drift licence, as well as a Formula D licence, so I swapped this engine in purely for its competition potential,” Nagai-san says. He’s playing his cards pretty close to his chest in terms of specs and power outputs, which is probably unsurprising as he’s unlikely to want to hand an advantage to his competitors. If you ask him what it pulls on the dyno, he’ll simply tell you “Safety belts,” with a wicked grin. But given that even on stock internals these engines can make Ferrari-shaming power figures, and a sodding great Garrett snail like this is good for a number beginning with a five (or possibly even a six), there’s unlikely to be any half-measures here. Everything about this car screams ‘maximum attack’.

“Obviously the engine helped it to stand out at SEMA too,” he continues. “It surprised a few people when I suggested fitting a 2JZ, but everybody co-operated and everybody respected my decision. This car was completed because of everyone’s help and goodwill, and I want to prove in the future that it is not only a show car, but also a proper drift car. When Gumball 3000 came to Japan, for example, a staff member came to my store to play and I ended up drifting with them in the passenger seat.”

And that’s just the start of things. Plans may have gone a bit Covid-shaped this year, as we’re seeing all over, but having wowed the crowds at SEMA, this car then went on to do the same at Tokyo Auto Salon, and you can be damn sure that it’s going to transition from static to action with devastating flair. So fear the show thing in Las Vegas – it’s out for blood and it’ll swallow your tyres whole.

Tech Spec: Rocket Bunny PS13

Styling:

Rocket Bunny Pandem widebody kit, custom-painted livery, adjustable rear wing, blacked-out headlights, crystal taillights

Tuning:

Toyota 2JZ 3.0-litre straight-six, single Garrett T04 turbo, cone filter on custom pipe, Chase Bays power steering kit, Nagao Techno transmission

Chassis:

17-inch OZ Futura forged split-rims, 255/40 Toyo Proxes tyres, DMAX coilovers, GK Tech suspension arm package, GK Tech discs, pads and lines

Interior:

Fully stripped, Pandem carbon-shelled bucket seats, Pandem harnesses, full rollcage, carbon dash, window nets, ZSS steering wheel, Defi rev counter, boost gauge and fuel pressure gauge in OE instrument binnacle, Defi gauges in central air vents, PLX MultiGauge