The MX-5 owners’ club may not be at all happy with what Nattawut Aupaiboon has done to his little roadster. With a 420bhp SR20 engine under the bonnet of his Mazda MX-5, he’s having too much fun to care…

Words: Dan Bevis. Photos: SerialOne

Some cars are untouchable. Or so people might have you believe. That’s what makes it so much fun when you see some of the outrageously mischievous builds that have been doing the rounds in recent years, like the Bentley Continental GT that’s been turned into a tube-frame dragster, Ryan Tuerck’s GT86 drift car with the Ferrari 458 engine, the R34 Skyline which appeared in sister-mag Banzai with a 2JZ motor… some people just like to shake things up. Build cars simply for the hell of it, embrace the hate, no f**ks given.

OK, so maybe the first-gen Mazda MX-5 isn’t quite in ‘untouchable’ territory just yet, but it’s getting close. There’s still oodles of them on the scene having cool mods lavished upon them, and there’s a thriving aftermarket; we’ve been keeping a keen eye on the classifieds though (y’know, for… reasons) and the days of picking up a cheap and ready-to-roll NA MX-5 for comfortably under a grand are well behind us. You can still pick up a decent one for, say, a couple of bags, but then you’ll probably end up having to weld in new sills and deal with the rot in the rear arches, and the rear calipers will most likely be sticking, and… well, they’re 1990s cars, and the nineties were a while ago. This is the reason that values are creeping up. If you want one, we reckon now’s the time – they probably won’t ever be cheap again.

With all that said, it’s especially cool when we see early Mazda MX-5s breaking out onto the scene with genuinely mould-shattering mods, and the one we’ve got here is a properly polarising little roadster. Owned by Bangkok modding enthusiast Nattawut Aupaiboon and built by local tuning hotshots Meaw Garage, it’s jam-packed with unique twists – most notably what’s going on under the bonnet. See, this is where we get to the ‘untouchable’ bit. It’s generally accepted within the tweed-jacketed pipe-smokers of the owners’ clubs that Mazda got this car right first time, and anything you do to, say, the suspension will be deeply frowned upon. But when it comes to the drivetrain – well, that really is something else. Yes, the perky little twin-cam the car came with was an absolute peach, in either 1.6- or 1.8-litre guise, and most people tend to leave it be. It can be livened up with hotter cams, and it’s quite receptive to turbocharging, given that the basic engine was shared with the 323 Turbo so it was engineered for boost in the first place. But to rip the whole engine out and replace it with something different? That’s very naughty indeed.

That’s exactly what’s happened here though, as the eagle-eyed will no doubt have spotted. And it’s not even another Mazda engine, for goodness’ sake. What we’re looking at specifically is an SR20DET, the 2.0-litre turbocharged twin-cam that you’d usually find nestled cosily within the bay of a Nissan 200SX. These are infinitely tuneable motors, happily responding to stellar boost levels and a robustly uncompromising approach to internal fettling with a cheerful ‘Thank you sir, perhaps I can interest you in some more horsepower…?’ These hallowed motors appear in drift cars, dragsters, heroes of track, street and strip; much like all the old, written-off Supras got cannibalised for their JZ motors, so the 200SXs are being systematically plundered for their SR20s. It really is that good an engine. But in an MX-5? This is going to ruffle a few feathers…

We’re totally OK with strutting about with our feathers all ruffly though, particularly when there’s substantial horsepower on the table. Meaw Garage haven’t just shoehorned a standard-spec SR20 in here; no, taking an in-for-a-penny approach, they’ve buggered about with it a bit. It’s now packing a GReddy TD06 turbo with an HKS wastegate, HKS cams, GReddy inlet manifold, custom exhaust system, a massively uprated fuelling system, and an HKS F-Con ECU to keep everything in order. The guys have mapped this to a safe and reliable 420bhp, which is pretty frickin’ nuts in a car that weighs about as much as an iPhone and a latte, and this hasn’t just been an exercise in raw horsepower. The chassis is muscled up to cope, with custom Cusco coilovers joined by FD3S Mazda RX-7 brakes at the front and Nissan Skyline units out back, and the interior is a work of road-racer art: there’s carbon everywhere, from the minimalist buckets to the instrument binnacle and centre console (as if the NA needs to get any lighter!) along with a bespoke rollcage. And outside? That’s the real masterstroke. There’s a beautiful nerdiness to building an MX-5/Eunos/Miata, with a culture of one-upmanship when it comes to finding obscure JDM aftermarket parts. In this case, we’re looking at a rare Garage Vary rear panel, complemented by the company’s lower lip at the front, while the near-mythical ZOOM Engineering provided the mirrors. In addition to this, Meaw Garage got elbows-deep in the custom work, creating those outstanding vented front wings, sideskirts and ducktail, as well as grafting in the rear diffuser from an FD3S RX-7. The headlight setup adds a touch of aggression, with a sleepy-eye kit holding the pop-ups at permanent half-mast, slimline LED lights peeping through the slits. And the whole thing has been lovingly slathered in a custom mix of citrus-infused paint, courtesy of the artisans at Royal Garage. The colour really pops against those superb WORK Meister S1s, their staggered dimensions pushing the very concept of static fitment to the extreme.

Some may say this Mazda is sacrilegious – we say it’s pushing the game forward. The Thai modding scene is on fire right now, and if these guys want to keep doing outrageous things with so-called untouchable cars, then bring it on. We wanna see P1 Imprezas with Lexus V8s, Iron Mask Skylines with Ford EcoBoosts, keep ’em coming. Nothing is untouchable.

Tech Spec: SR20 Mazda MX-5

Styling:

Paint by Royal Garage, custom vented front wings, Garage Vary front lip, custom headlight intake, ZOOM Engineering mirrors, custom sideskirts, custom ducktail, Garage Vary rear panel, FD3S RX-7 rear diffuser, sleepy-eyes with slimline LED headlights

Tuning:

Nissan SR20DET 2.0-litre, GReddy TD06-25G turbo, HKS wastegate, HKS 264 cams, GReddy intake manifold, custom exhaust system, 550cc pink injectors, Aeromotive fuel pressure regulator, Walbro fuel pumps, custom intercooler, alloy radiator, GReddy pulley kit, OS-Giken twin-plate clutch, HKS F-Con ECU – tuned by Meaw Garage, 420bhp

Chassis:

9×17-inch (front) and 10×17-inch (rear) WORK Meister S1 wheels, 195/45 (f) and 215/45 (r) tyres, custom Cusco coilovers, FD3S Mazda RX-7 front brakes, Nissan Skyline rear brakes

Interior:

Carbon fibre bucket seats, harnesses, ZOOM Engineering rear-view mirrors, custom steering wheel, custom rollcage, carbon instrument binnacle, carbon centre console, GReddy PRofec B boost controller

Feature first appeared in Fast Car magazine. 

It’s a formula as old as time (or, at least, the automobile) itself: rims + lows = success. Add in a rampant hike in horsepower, and RacingLine’s bagged A7 is a fresh twist on a timeless equation…

Feature first appeared in Fast Car. Words: Dan Bevis. Photos: Matt Clifford.

The old saying goes that you should always keep your work life and home life separate. This is a vital technique to stop your brain exploding – sure, there are people out there who’ll wake up in a cold sweat at 3am to check their work emails and see if the latest quarterly projections have come through from Chicago, but these are the people who don’t have any hobbies, never see their families and have heart attacks at young ages. The balance between work-to-live and live-to-work is key.

For Matt Walker, however, there is no average day at the office, no routine of mundanity. So merging work with leisure isn’t such a big deal; his day job as Technical Director at RacingLine means that taking interesting cars and making them more powerful and generally cooler is all part of the bread-and-butter. And that’s not a bad way to live, is it?

You may well be familiar with RacingLine – after all, they’ve been around doing aspirational motoring stuff for donkeys’ years – but if not, let’s just say that this is a company very much worth knowing about in the VAG tuning scene. Originally trading as Volkswagen Motorsport UK back in 1996, the outfit was wholly owned by Volkswagen Group AG in Germany, set up to focus on the British Rally Championship programme. As time went on their sporting prowess grew, moving into circuit racing in the early 2000s; they successfully campaigned racing Golfs and Caddys, built Safety Cars, and in 2018 developed an Audi R8 24hr racer. And this is just a tiny percentage of what they’ve achieved on racetracks around the world. With all of this motorsport experience, it’s hardly a surprise that the race-bred parts they sell to customers are truly world-class.

What’s also worth knowing, and something keenly demonstrated by the low-slung A7 you see lurking malevolently across these pages, is that RacingLine isn’t all about the high-octane race cars. Subtly tuning road cars is a major part of the game too, and this is perfectly manifested by this particular diesel-powered saloon. “We wanted a new development car,” Matt explains. “We have had an S6 and an A8, and this A7 has the new MD1 ECU type we wanted to do some development work on.” So this was a business decision, but let’s not pretend it’s been developed purely to bolster the bottom line; yes, demo cars are vital for any credible tuner’s internal ecosystem, but this was also a passion project for Matt. He’s been modifying cars since he was seventeen years old, having built more projects than he can count – he has three personal projects on the go at the moment, and of course there’s a whole fleet of treats at RacingLine.

A brand-new A7 was duly sourced, and naturally Matt optioned the most interesting one he could: the V6 turbo-diesel was the engine in the crosshairs, but he didn’t want the wishy-washy 228bhp-spec 45 TDI. No, it was the brawnier 50 TDI that was needed to tick the performance box, and the fact that the A7 comes fully-loaded with toys (including the utterly beguiling Virtual Cockpit) was a sizeable cherry on this especially delicious cake.

You’ll note, then, that the interior is factory-stock, and the exterior largely is too. You see, subtlety is an art that can take some time to perfect; it’s often said that a violin concerto will be enhanced by the notes that aren’t being played rather than those that are, the subtle nuances of minimalism, of paring things back, speaking louder than an excitable riot of excess ever could. The principles of Minimalist art echo the same; taking the reductive elements of Modernism and distilling them down to that which is fundamentally essential in unembellished form. Similarly, Minimalist architecture employs little more than white light, broad surfaces, an absence of clutter, and a Zen attitude. What’s important is what’s not there. So Matt was keen to take what Audi provided, keep things simple, and tastefully amplify the effect in three key areas: wheels, suspension, and – most importantly – power.

“The air-ride was fitted by one of our dealers – James at GRM Northampton,” Matt explains. It’s a pukka Air Lift setup, and the fact that the contemporary VAG platforms are so well served by the Air Lift range means that the fitment was a breeze and everything works magnificently with the OE chassis setup. 3P management is a sensible choice here too, offering as it does a fully integrated manifold, five custom presets, rise-on-start, show mode, and the nifty Air Lift Performance 3 controller. And of course, when you’ve bagged a boxfresh ride, you can’t just leave it on the stock rims, it’ll look unfinished. But fear not, Matt had a gameplan here from the start: “We’d previously worked with Rotiform to build a Golf R for the 2019 SEMA show,” he says, “so when we built this A7 it was always the plan to get Rotiform involved to create the wheels for it.” The result is a masterclass in tasteful elegance with a simmering undercurrent of brutality, the SRG Mono 2 wheels measuring a robust 10.5×21-inches all round. Seeing large-diameter multispoke wheels tucked deep into the arches of an Audi can’t help but call to mind images of 1990s A4 BTCC racers, and yet at the same time the classiness of the design works beautifully with the gently flowing body lines of the A7.

With the aesthetics taken care of, it was time to delve into the really important stuff, the true meat-and-potatoes of the project: the RacingLine performance upgrade. The company’s proprietary product here is the Power Control Module, and this is something that offers a full-car tuning package. It’s not just about winding up the boost and seeing what happens, or focusing on peak power at the expense of usability. No, this is a holistic tune designed to mimic the parameters of the OEM while markedly amplifying figures across the board – this means more power and torque across the rev range, better efficiency; an OEM+ result. A neat by-product of this is improved fuel economy, but you’re reading the wrong mag if that’s your primary concern. This upgrade isn’t just about raw numbers, although the peaks are always important: we’re talking a gruff 330bhp and 700Nm (translating to 516lb.ft), and that’s not the sort of anger and fury you’d expect to find inside a subtly styled A7 with TDI badges. All of this speaks of RacingLine’s tuning prowess – they’ve been doing this sort of thing for long enough that it’s all second nature, they know it inside out. So this A7 may have been built as a show car, and the aired out menace over its racer’s-edge rims may talk the talk exceedingly eloquently… but a RacingLine build is all about the performance, and this superb Audi demonstrates it in fine style. Endless acres of silky, stealthy thrust. Matt’s been using it as a daily driver, and the sublime duality is playing out just as it should: “It’s great fun to drive, and people seem to love seeing it,” he says, which is pretty much mission accomplished. The evidence is abundantly clear that in cases like this mixing the work life and the home life can happen in perfect symbiosis; the car’s working hard to earn its keep (a RacingLine 8-pot 430mm brake upgrade is next on the to-do list), and at the same time it’s slotting into this seasoned modifier’s everyday life just splendidly. The perfect formula for modern living.

Tech Spec: Bagged A7

Styling:

Stock 50 TDI quattro, LED front and rear lights, retractable rear spoiler

Tuning:

3.0-litre V6 50 TDI, RacingLine Power Control Module, 8-speed ZF transmission, 330bhp, 516lb.ft

Chassis:

10.5×21-inch forged Rotiform SRG Mono 2 wheels, Air Lift Performance suspension with 3P management

Interior:

Stock 50 TDI quattro, Virtual Cockpit with twin haptic touchscreens and full-colour digital gauge cluster