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FC THROWBACK: BAGGED CHEVROLET BEL AIR

Welcome to this week’s FC Throwback, where we take a look back at some of our favourite previous feature cars. This week it’s Steve Holmes jaw-dropping ’59 Chevrolet Bel Air…

We don’t know about you, but we are absolutely fascinated by old school American cars. The beautiful bodylines and the huge change in design between model years is both challenging to remember and massively exciting. Owning and driving these cars back in the 50s and 60s must have been incredible.

Sometimes we lose ourselves on Wikipedia reading about all the cool American cars. The mind-bending engine sizes these machines possess and the mad speed at which the models evolved is super-interesting. Trawling through the different model years on Google Images is like watching art in motion – the crazy fins on the rear wings and incredibly cool looking lights are one thing. The sweet interiors with beautiful dashboards are another.

We don’t know a huge amount about American cars, but we do know one thing: we absolutely love them. Steve Holmes knows a whole load more about these rides and it’s fair to say he is fully living the American dream here in UK, driving this lovely ’59 Bel Air and running his own business, along with his friend, restoring classic cars.

“I think American cars have always been in my blood,” he says. “My parents have always been into them and I have been brought up surrounded by US car culture.” So how do you find a car like this? The answer is simple: eBay. Steve says: “I was looking through US eBay one lunchtime at work and came across this example. It came from Cleveland in Ohio.

“There has been a lot of work undertaken to get the car roadworthy and that took around two years, so it has been on the road for around four years here in the UK,” our man explains.

So what have you done to it? “Well visually I bought the car as it looks today. It was running and driving, but needed a bit of work to get it through the UK MoT,“ Steve smiles. When he says ‘a bit of work’, what he really means is ‘quite a lot of work’ to mere mortals like you and I.

“The car needed all of the interior and boot floors replacing which was fairly simple since I sourced the pattern parts from the States. I also had to do some further welding work on the rear wheel arch and upgrade the cooling system.”

The 350 cubic inch (see what we were saying about mind-bending engine sizes?) or 5.7-litre motor sounds so sweet and the dialed stance, brought together by 18-inch and 20-inch wheels front and rear respectively, all dropped using custom air suspension makes this a sure-fire winner of a car!

Owning a car like this is an emotional experience. Things don’t always go to plan, but one thing is for sure, every journey is an adventure. “The smile this car puts on my face every time I drive it is incredible,” says Steve. “The V8 engine delivers smiles per gallon, not miles per gallon!”

It’s for this reason alone that he doesn’t drive the car more often. Although this isn’t a show vehicle – the patina paintwork leaves the car with a real weathered character and ensures that it can be used whenever Steve wants – it’s not a daily either. Although we guess driving a car like this everyday might take some of the excitement out of the whole experience.

Either way, we’re just glad that there are people like our man Steve in the UK, really living their very own American dream…

TECH SPEC CHEVY BEL AIR

Tuning
350 cubic inch (5.7l) V8; exhaust tuck for extra ground clearance with custom exit position in front of rear wheels.

Chassis
Esajian Wingnut wheels 8×18 (front) and 10×20-inch (rear) with 235/45×18 and 265/40×20 tyres respectively; rear airbag suspension; front is dropped spindles with 6-cylinder springs (engine was originally a 6 cylinder so keeping the 6-cylinder springs with the extra weight of the V8 engine helps lower the car more).

Interior
Stock with a couple of rips!

Thanks
My parents for giving me what I see as good taste in cars! Stateside Autoparts in Atherstone, Manchester, who were really helpful in finding any bits I needed.

Source

September 10, 2020
Lucid Air electric luxury sedan: Debut Dream Edition starts at $169,000

The Lucid Air, the debut electric luxury car California’s Lucid Motors officially revealed Wednesday evening, can slam out 9.9-second quarter-mile times (faster than any other production sedan), accelerate to 60 mph in as little as 2.5 seconds, and get to a top speed of 168 mph.

Or, it can offer up to 517 miles of estimated EPA range, with the potential to recover up to 300 miles of range with just a 20-minute fast charge.

And, as Lucid has teased, it offers the interior space of a Mercedes S-Class or BMW 7-Series, with the footprint of an E-Class or 5-Series.

“With the Lucid Air, we have created a halo car for the entire industry, one which shows the advancements that are possible by pushing the boundaries of EV technology and performance to new levels,” said Lucid CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson.

Staffed with Tesla expats—Rawlinson, the chief engineer of the original Model S included—Lucid refused to use off-the-shelf components and has instead gone its own route on virtually everything technical and design-related. By designing its own motors, inverters, and battery packs, on a vehicle running at more than 900 volts—plus a sedan shape that maximizes space but has industry-best sedan aerodynamics, Lucid is able to effectively raise the goalpost for electric-vehicle efficiency, range, and performance.

2021 Lucid Air

There’s a catch, of course, and in the case of the Lucid Air, it’s that such bragging rights don’t come cheap. The exclusive halo version, called the Lucid Air Dream Edition, which will arrive in spring 2021 and be capable of accomplishing all those astonishing, Tesla-beating performance tasks, will cost $169.000.

For those willing to wait a little longer, the Air will come with a base price just below $80,000, although the more-affordable model won’t arrive until 2022.

With the federal EV tax credit of $7,500 potentially applying to any buyers, that will bring the effective price down to as little as $72,500 in some cases.

The Dream Edition will be delivered first, in spring 2021, and will be offered in a choice of three colors: Stellar White, Infinite Black, or a Eureka Gold hue that’s exclusive to this top version. Dream Edition cars will arrive in a special Santa Monica interior theme, with nappa-grain Bridge of Weir leather plus silvered Eucalyptus wood. It will also ride on 21-inch AeroDream wheels and get special trim and badging.

2021 Lucid Air

The 1,080-horsepower Dream Edition won’t quite hit the peak range for the lineup, though, and those big wheels will cost some range. The Dream Edition is estimated at 465 miles with them, but 503 miles with 19-inch AeroRange wheels.

The Lucid Air Grand Touring model will follow in the summer and cost $139,000. It will provide the lineup’s top 517-mile estimated range, with an 800-hp version of the powertrain still providing 3.0-second 0-60 mph times, the quarter-mile in 10.8 seconds, and the same top speed—as well as the same 113-kwh battery pack.

Next up will be the Air Touring. Set to arrive in the last quarter of 2021, it’s positioned as the heart of the lineup and will offer a price of $95,000 and an estimated EPA range of 406 miles from a smaller battery pack, with its 620 hp still providing a 3.2-second 0-60 mph time and a top speed of 155 mph.

The overarching design of the Air is like no other; it’s low and sleek, and quite cab-forward compared to most gasoline cars. Although Lucid hasn’t yet revealed space or cargo figures, back-seat space is abundant for taller adults, and a future layout will bring a reclining seat with a built-in Ottoman.

The Air’s full glass roof is a distinguishing feature from the outside, as is the Micro Lens Array headlight system, which was developed entirely in-house and digitally “steers” the light direction to help improve visibility and safety.

2021 Lucid Air

Inside, the look is elegant but uncluttered, with a 34-inch curved touchscreen just ahead of the driver, providing a top-level view for a range of vehicle functions. For more detail, the driver can simply flick downward to see specifics on the screen below.

The Air is one of the first production vehicles to support localized vehicle controls using Alexa—for climate-control temperature settings, for instance—and there’s full support for navigation, streaming media, and smart home controls via Alexa.

A suite of active-safety and driver-assistance features called DreamDrive works with 32 sensors, combining camera, radar, and ultrasonic sensors, plus what Lucid says is the first standard high-resolution lidar system in an EV. DreamDrive also includes a driver-monitoring system.

Production starts in early 2021 at Lucid’s factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, and 20 Lucid Studios and service centers are due to open by the end of 2021. Lucid is taking $7,500 refundable deposits for the first Dream Editions or $1,000 refundable deposits for the other models.

Source

September 10, 2020
MODIFIED HONDA CIVIC EF: HOME-BUILT HERO

The UK modding scene isn’t all about financed new cars on big-budget air – there’s still a massive subculture of enthusiasts getting their fingers dirty on down-to-earth garage builds. This modified Honda Civic EF shows us how it’s done…

There’s a robust core of cars that have unexpectedly leapt right from ‘whatever’ to ‘woah!’ on the petrolhead intrigue spectrum. Cars that were everywhere back in the 1980s and ’90s, but weren’t considered sufficiently interesting or noteworthy to save and thus gradually marched their way into the nation’s crushers, only now to be lamented by a growing clique of retro car enthusiasts who’ve suddenly cottoned on to the fact that there aren’t many left. We’re talking about the E80 Corolla, the B12 Sunny, the second-gen Tercel wagon. Why didn’t we save them?

Ah, don’t blame yourselves. None of us could have known about this massive shift in perception. Look at the Civic EF. Ten or fifteen years ago, this would have been an unremarkable thing to bumble around in, and yet today it’s a very cool steer indeed. Funny how that happens, isn’t it? Time alters perspectives, we can see the merit in the EF Civic now. In fact, the more we pore over the specs, the more we can see just how stellar these little hatchbacks and saloons were. Take the ones with the D14A1 engine, for example – this was an engine option only available in European markets, and it’d be easy to write it off as a boring little 1.4 SOHC that the Japanese and Americans didn’t want. But look at it in context: a Mk2 Vauxhall Astra of the same age gave you around 70bhp from its 1.4-litre engine; the Mk4 Ford Escort’s 1.4 offered 75bhp. The Civic’s 1.4 had dual carbs and a meatier 90bhp – with a 16-valve head, not like those Euro 8-valvers. And it wasn’t just about the superior engine; the EF had a brilliant chassis, with double-wishbone suspension at the front and an independent multi-link rear. There was a time when these cars were seen as grannies’ runabouts in the UK, but that time is most definitely behind us. The increasingly obscure Civic EF is a peppy little tearaway with oodles of potential to become a manic racer.

It certainly turned Irene Lewis’s head. This is her first modified car project, and she’s definitely charged in with both barrels blazing. “I loved Hondas anyway, but then I really fell in love with this shape of Civic,” she explains. “I found the car for sale on Facebook back in May 2014 – the previous owner was also a Honda lover! The car was lowered on springs, red BBS wheels, it had the rear seats stripped from the back, but that was pretty much it.”

An excellent blank canvas for Irene to learn and hone her skills then, and she wasn’t planning on taking any half-measures; indeed, she’d lined up her dream aesthetic and it was something pretty damn hardcore. “I saw photos online of the Kanjozoku style and started researching the history behind it,” she says. “I was really into both the car shape and the story of the way they were used in Japan, and I just knew I really wanted one.” For the uninitiated, the Kanjo Loop is sort of the opposite of the high-speed Wangan Expressway; it’s a tight, narrow Osaka highway with lots of corners – Kanjo racers need agility as much as they need power. The roots of the Kanjozoku (that is, the outlaw racers who tear up the Kanjo Loop after dark, deliberately provoking and then outrunning the police) stretch back to the 1980s. Honda Civics have always been a favourite among this tribe, for the cars’ tuneable motors and taut little chassis. The 3rd-gen Civic Si was the 1980s weapon of choice – Japanese enthusiasts know this as ‘The Wonder Civic’ – and today the EF, EG and EK Civics are strongly continuing the ethos.

Kanjo racers take a lot of cues from Touring Car racing, modding their cars with graphics and aero aids from Group A race cars, as well as borrowing heavily from their chassis setups. The path Irene’s followed is a glorious UK tribute to these late-night Osaka shenanigans, and the most impressive part of all is that this car is a proper home-built hero. The EF’s in the midst of a makeover right now, and as the photos on Irene’s Instagram (@hondachick94) attest, her life for much of the early part of 2019 has involved endless sanding and prep work for the EF’s impending colour makeover. The look you see here, then, is a snapshot in time – Irene’s first interpretation of UK Kanjo before levelling up.

“Like I say, the car was pretty standard when I got it,” she explains. “My first main purchase was the Watanabe wheels, which completely changed the look of the car. I started collecting Kanjo-style stickers from the beginning, and got the door boards added. Then I had the Chargespeed rep spoiler made through Fiberworx, and also fitted the carbon bonnet and exhaust.” This exhaust does much to alter the character of the D14, comprising a JP Performance 4-2-1 manifold going into a Powerflow 2.25-inch exhaust with decat centre and 3-inch rolled tip. Combined with the fact that she’s removed the airbox to let the carbs breathe, this rorty little Honda now makes all sorts of naughty noises. “The next job was to swap the springs for H&R coilovers, before fitting the bucket seats and harnesses.” So the money’s being spent where it matters – H&R is a serious quality name when it comes to coilovers, and the chassis has also received a smattering of Integra Type R upgrades as well as a thorough polybushing. This is a Kanjo-fabulous chassis, built on a budget but with decent money spent where it matters, and it’s more than ready for some decent power. And don’t worry, that’s high up on the to-do list this year…

“I used to use the Civic EF as a daily, although while it’s off the road getting ready for the next step I have a sedan version which I use to get around,” says Irene. “But it’s such a head-turner, it gets so much attention wherever I go which still surprises me to this day! I often get questions about the style of the car, the reasons for the Jason masks, the number boards, window net and so on, so it’s always fun explaining all about the Kanjo, the loop, and I definitely get some blank faces wondering what I’m talking about it! Obviously being a female interested in cars I believe it sparks even more of a reaction as people don’t expect me to be the owner, I think there’s still a stereotype that even if a woman is interested in cars then it’ll be a certain car with ‘girly’ mods. The generic ‘Are you driving your boyfriend’s car?’ comment has certainly been asked a lot over the years.” It’s a real shame that women in the scene still have to endure this sort of outdated nonsense, but hopefully the countless home-spannering ladies we encounter will ultimately help to redress the balance. After all, there’s no such thing as a girl’s car or a boy’s car, they’re all just cars. Judge the machines and their builders and drivers on merit, we say – that’s all that matters, those 1970s clichés don’t belong in 2019.

Irene’s got big plans for her modified Honda Civic EF this year too, you can be sure of that. The bodywork has been a real labour of love, representing untold hours in the garage, but there’s more to this Kanjo Civic than just looks: “Aside from the full respray there’s going to be an engine swap, new wheels, suspension and a few other goodies! It’ll be back on the road before you know it, I’m making great progress, and I have a few shows booked already – Japfest, JapShow and a few at my local circuit, Castle Combe. And then the track days!”

What we’re witnessing here is a remarkable transformation – a car that was previously viewed as a pensioners’ runabout, reinvented as a shadow-dwelling hoodlum with a dark soul and a taste for vengeance. And what it does best of all is to remind us of our roots: modding cars doesn’t have to be a big-money endeavour, and it also shouldn’t be a pissing contest. It’s about getting stuck in, making new things happen, then getting out there and enjoying the drive. Irene’s down-to-earth love for her modified Honda Civic EF and other old Hondas can teach us all a thing or two.

Tech Spec: Modified Honda Civic EF

Engine:

D14A1 1.4-litre 16v twin-carb, airbox removed, purple cam cover, 6two1 skin-grater oil cap, Powerflow 2.25-inch exhaust with decat centre and 3-inch rolled tip, JP Performance 4-2-1 manifold, 5-speed manual

Chassis:

7×14-inch ET20 Watanabe wheels with gold centres and polished lips, 185/50 Yokohama A539 tyres, H&R coilovers, custom front EF upper strut, custom rear EG upper strut, Integra Type R RCAs and LCAs (loop fitment), polybushed throughout

Interior:

Stripped rear, carpets and headlining, Broadway wide-view mirror, Bride Low Max driver bucket, Corbeau Clubsport passenger bucket, STR 5-point harnesses, OMP seat rails, OMP steering wheel with custom purple centre, short-shift kit with anodised purple knob, OEM Honda dash mat, custom CRX doorcards, TRS grey mesh window net, Kanjo masks

Exterior:

OEM-style carbon fibre bonnet, Chargespeed (Fibreworx) rear wing, custom Mk3 Golf splitter, custom amber corner markers and indicators, Kanjo Civic number boards, OEM Honda mudflaps, de-wipered and de-badged rear

Feature taken from Banzai magazine. Words: Dan Bevis. Photos: Gav Roberts.

Source

September 9, 2020