Having seen his friends triumph at SEMA, Richard Gutierrez wanted in on the action. The resulting modified Toyota AE86 with a BEAMS engine is a solid-gold winner – although his deeply personal project was never just about scooping trophies. No, this flawless show-stopper’s soul yearns for the track…

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

The old saying goes that you should dress for the job you want, rather than the one you have. This is a notion that’s really captured people’s imagination over the generations: Roxette were telling us to get dressed for success back in 1988, S Club 7 ensured their place in posterity by suggesting we reach for the stars, it’s a relatable and practical solution to the inevitable conceptual ennui we find ourselves trudging through in the day-to-day. Better things are on the horizon, you’ve just got to reach for them.

Take the gold paintwork on this particularly spangly modified Toyota AE86. Gold is the colour of winners, it’s the top of the podium, it’s something Spandau Ballet believed made you indestructible… and so it’s come to pass here, like a pantone reinterpretation of the concept of nominative determinism. Pigmental determinism, perhaps? Whatever, it worked – this gleaming golden hachi-roku made its debut at SEMA 2019 and immediately scooped a top-40 place in the Battle of the Builders, a top-10 in the Battle of the Builders Sport Compact class, a place in the Toyo Tires Treadpass tent, and 2nd place in the JE Pistons Masters of Motors category. Given the quality and breadth of what turns up at SEMA, it really is a phenomenal result for a car built not by a big-budget custom shop, but a plumber who just happens to like making cool cars in his spare time.

That’s right – it’s not just the magical qualities of gold which have serendipitously led to these stellar successes, but the grit and determination of Richard Gutierrez (aka Riko), who’s basically spent his life wanting to build a car of this quality and, now that he has, he’s really got a taste for it.

“I’ve been building cars since 2005 – they reflect my life and my passion,” he explains. “My first build was a Laguna Blue Honda S2000 with the full Mugen treatment; when things got rough with the recession I sold my cars and drove an EG Civic hatchback for three years, but then things turned around and I was able to have a Nismo 370Z, a 700bhp Nissan GT-R with an Amuse kit, a TechArt Porsche 997 Turbo… and today all the cars I’ve got are matching in my own custom shade of gold paint: my RWB Yoshiwara Porsche 993, my 1985 Corolla AE86 GTS, my Rocket Bunny 240SX with LS1 swap, and now this N3 AE86 SEMA build.”

The regular visits to SEMA speak for themselves – Riko is a man with an eye for quality; he may be prolific in his work, but every micron of each project is superbly planned out and sublimely finished, as you can see from the photos laid out here before you. This AE86 also represents an interesting twist, as his previous SEMA visits had been on RWB Porsche duty rather than actually in the show – doing rallies, hanging out with hotel valets… but in 2018 something changed. “I saw how successful two of my friends were displaying their own builds at SEMA, and how much exposure it got them,” he recalls. “Khyzyl Saleem (@thekyza) with his E30 and Scott Girondo (@dunk186) with his Honda K-swapped Porsche 911 – I wanted some of that shine. But what to bring? I knew budget would be important, and also the time frame. And at the time I had a 1984 AE86 SR5 shell sitting in my backyard…”

Decision made, then. The base-model Corolla would be reinvented as a show-stopper, using Riko’s unique style to prove to the world that there’s life in the hachi-roku yet. The quality, the fabrication, the creativity, and overall the vision – this would be an AE86 like no other.

The SR5 (which is a lowly US-market spec; it came with an 87bhp single-cam motor rather than the fabled 4A-GE) was originally bought as a parts car for Riko’s Corolla GTS, on the grounds that it was cheaper to buy a whole car than scratch around for the individual bits. It had been sitting out in a forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains for the better part of a decade, and frankly it was a mess; the steering wheel rubber had been totally eaten away by rats, the stock interior had been removed and then thrown back in like a dumpster. When Riko bought it, principally for its straight body, he parked it in his yard and essentially ignored it for four years, until this whole project kicked off in February 2019. Amazingly the only part that was rusty was the rear hatch, which shows what a canny purchase it was in the first place, but of course Riko wanted to do this properly. So there was more than a little remedial work to do.

“The shell was media-blasted, perfected, and treated to a full rotisserie paint job,” he explains. “I like old cars, but I don’t like the old wiring, or dealing with hunting for classic parts. I find it more reliable to redo everything – still keeping the soul of the car, but bringing it up to date. And yes, this did cost a lot to build, but any race car project at this level will run that bill and much higher; I wanted to show that there is a level of quality that can be seen in professional race cars and to do the same with this one – to show people that you can apply those same principles to these old Japanese street cars. And I hope it will inspire others to push for higher quality with their builds.”

Riko was fully hands-on with this project, as with all of his previous ones; running his own always-on-call commercial water heater company leaves little spare time, but his role in the process is more managemental: “I have the idea and vision, I choose the parts, I pick the paint, I schedule, I budget, I manage emotions,” he says. “I am the contractor and I sub out the work. I’m extremely involved with the build process – it’s like having a child and raising them the way you want to; ignore them and you will have lots of trouble ahead!” So the build took place at the hands of Marcus Fry Racing in Redwood City, California, with the paintwork carried out by Juan Ayala at 24/7 Auto Body. Grant Hendricks at Battle Garage Racing Service was on hand to supply all the parts on Riko’s detailed wishlist, and with all of these experts working in harmony, the build came together impressively quickly. “The main hurdle was waiting for the Custom Garage Speed N3 bodykit to arrive from Japan, we had to wait three months,” says Riko. “It was hard to recover from that lost time, and the car ended up coming out of the bodyshop two weeks before SEMA! We took a freshly painted body, assembled it and had it running by 5am on the Sunday before the show… I’ve learned that every step matters, even if it’s in the beginning of the game with four quarters left to play! You have to manage every piece as if there’s no overtime.”

The level of customisation throughout the build really is astonishing. That slick shaved and wire-tucked bay houses a Gen-5 BEAMS engine, the ITBs packing massive trumpets as a siren song to every Toyota fan out there, and despite being unashamedly a full-on show car, it’s been built from first principles to fulfil that race-car brief Riko was so insistent upon. The suspension has been totally reworked, the rear end wearing a ‘true’ coilover setup (whereby the OEM spring-on-axle arrangement is wholly replaced by proper coilovers), and the entire Techno Toy Tuning catalogue has been pillaged to make everything possible under there fully adjustable and dialled in for pure function. Indeed, the only factory-stock part underneath is the front lower subframe, everything else has been upgraded for track-biased thrills. The wheels are a story in themselves, as Riko worked closely with JC Pepino at WORK Wheels to build up a set of Equip 40 Smoky Black Edition four-spokes – only twenty-five sets had ever been made, all of which were sold, but Riko was able to convince WORK to produce just one more set using the last drip of paint they had left, set number 26-of-25.

The brakes that sit behind them are proper because-race-car stuff too, the Brembo ‘Baby Daddy’ BBK at the front precision-engineered to fit behind smaller wheels, and the rear being Ford-fitment because, naturally, Riko’s decided to run a Ford 8.8 LSD rear axle. But of course. Peek through those lightweight polycarbonate windows and you’ll see that it’s all built for the track in there; it may be so clean you could genuinely eat your dinner off it without getting any nasty infections (but seriously, don’t – Riko puts a lot of effort into keeping it this clean), but there’s no denying how function is on a level pegging with form. The AiM Strada digi-dash, that incredible rollcage, the Bride Zeta 3 seats (mounted lower in custom floor cut-outs for optimal driver position), the low-down Radium fuel cell… the car’s first job was to win trophies and hearts, but make no mistake, this dude’s off to the track. That’s what this was really built for.

“It’s so personal for me,” Riko smiles. “I love watching my door roll up and seeing a race car in my stable! I keep building these racers, and one day I’ll have time to track them; the day job leaves me little time to get away on weekends, but it is a dream one day to take them all to the track and show the years of building had real purpose. It’s something you can’t just buy, these cars took years and I wasn’t sure if people would get the message or even know what I was doing, but thankfully I was wrong. People knew I was nuts to go this far with this little old car, but they seem to truly appreciate why I did it. It was awesome, I want to build again for 2020.”

…and that’s exactly what Riko will do. The build for the next SEMA show is already well underway. Although we suspect that this time, despite the punishing build schedule, he’ll be finding some time to take this world-class Corolla out onto the track and use it for what it was built for. That gleaming golden hue has a lot to live up to.

Tech Spec: Modified Toyota AE86

Styling:

Custom Riko gold paint – by 24/7 Auto Body, Redwood, California; Custom Garage Speed N3 bodykit (imported from Japan), TRD rear spoiler, JDM Levin front end conversion, JDM headlights with fogs, AE86 Sprinter taillights, Craft Square carbon fibre mirrors, polycarbonate windows by Marcus Fry Racing

Tuning:

3S-GE Gen-5 BEAMS 2.0-litre four-cyl, shaved and wire-tucked bay, Battle Garage Toyota 20v ITBs with SQ Engineering adapter plate and 100mm trumpets, SQ Engineering slimline rear housing, SQ Engineering slimline alternator kit, SQ Engineering exhaust flange, SQ Engineering throttle pull-down linkage, Link ECU and harness, Xcessive Manufacturing engine mounts and frame spacers, Marcus Fry Racing custom chassis harness, Marcus Fry Racing custom cooling setup with Spal fans, Marcus Fry Racing custom Radium fuel cell, Toyota J160 6-speed gearbox with SQ Engineering shifter relocation kit and custom MFR mounts, Southbay Driveline custom propshaft, Ford 8.8 rear axle with LSD

Power:

220bhp

Chassis:

9.5x15in -35 (front) and 10.5x15in -47 Work Equip 40 Smoky Black Edition wheels, 225/45 (f) and 235/50 (r) Toyo R888R tyres, Annex Suspension coilovers (‘true’ setup replacing OEM spring-on-axle), Techno Toy Tuning (T3) equal-length four-link kit with box kit, T3 panhard rod, T3 GTX2 front lower control arms, T3 knuckles, T3 outer tie rods, T3 rear ARB control brackets and drop-mounts, Cusco anti-roll bars, T3 Wilwood ‘Baby Daddy’ front BBK, Wilwood Ford 8.8 rear BBK, Tilton brake pedals and reservoir, custom brake lines by Marcus Fry Racing

Interior:

AiM Strada Link Edition digital dash, Bride Zeta 3 XL seats, Takata harnesses, illest / The Hundreds special edition steering wheel with Renown USA, Techno Toy Tuning racing floor plates, metal rear panels, weld-in rollcage, cut floor to lower driver’s seating position, control panel box and wiring by Marcus Fry Racing

A modified Mercedes 190E is one thing. But this? This is surely the product of some frighteningly deranged laboratory experiments. The team at F7LTHY Fabrication are the ones stirring the beakers, and things are about to get freaky…

Feature taken from Fast Car magazine. Words: Joe Partridge. Photos: Larry Chen

If the hysteria of social media is to be believed, there are strange things going on in North America. And no, we’re not talking about that fellow in D.C. with the intriguing hair, or the common belief that aerosol-propelled cheese is an acceptable foodstuff. It’s the SEMA show we’re on about, and specifically the colossal deviations from normality that essentially broke the internet from its moorings at the back end of last year. We’re used to seeing cars which are absolutely bananas bleeding out from every Vegas orifice, but 2019 really knocked things up a notch. And if you teleport yourself to the north-west border of Washington state, then amble twenty miles or so up to Coquitlam in British Columbia, you’ll find the root of some of this mischief. This is where F7LTHY Fabrication resides, and it’s their ‘Evil Evo’ Mercedes-Benz 190E that’s got all of these digital tongues wagging with such fervour.

“I couldn’t find the car of my dreams, so I built it,” reasons the company’s owner, Tim Lajambe, and you can’t really argue with the logic of that. It’s clear that he’s a man possessed of both clarity of vision and extraordinary skill too, as this vivid and vibrant creation isn’t just any old modified Mercedes 190E – it’s the weirdest and scariest one we’ve ever seen. The new gold standard for retro Merc saloons.

The history of the Mercedes 190E as a model is an interesting one, as it’s characterised by a fabulously beguiling phrase: ‘Massively over-engineered’. Not our term, but in fact one genuinely employed by Mercedes-Benz themselves to describe the model when it emerged blinking into the motorscape way back in late 1982. This car represented the dawn of a new era for Mercedes, the so-called ‘Baby Benz’ being the marque’s first foray into the compact-executive sector. They poured over £600m into the model’s R&D, patenting a natty new five-link rear and throwing in all sorts of über-modern accoutrements: seatbelt pretensioners, airbags, ABS… with BMW dominating the sector with the ubiquitous 3 Series, M-B had to go in hard. They needed to over-engineer the thing, it was the only way to muscle in. Crisply styled by Bruno Sacco and engineered by a team headed by Prof. Werner Breitschwerdt, the finished product offered everything from luxurious family transport to minicab chic across its broad spec range; the results spoke for themselves on the road, and the model proved hugely successful in motorsport too… minor waves were made in rallying thanks to the likes of Snobeck Racing, but it was the flame-spitting DTM where it really made its mark. For a generation of burgeoning petrolheads, wide-bodied 190E Touring Cars were the stuff of dreams.

This sort of developmental extravagance and motorsport prowess has, unsurprisingly, given the 190E quite a strong following. You tend to find pretty fervent brand evangelists in the retro car world – Mini fans who’ll drive nothing but Minis, MkI Golf owners who won’t shut up about Wolfsburg – but it’s interesting to note that Mercedes-Benz enthusiasts are more effusive than most. Once that three-pointed star is emblazoned upon the subconscious, it’s there for keeps. This is true of Tim at F7LTHY; “the passion started the same as it did for so many others from my generation,” he says. “It was a poster of a 190E Evo 2 that inspired me to follow DTM racing, and that imagery was forever burned in my head! So I daily-drove a 2.5 16v 190E for years, which furthered my love for the platform. And once I was in a position to be able to afford to build my perfect version of a modern Evo, and I had acquired the skillset and team to execute it correctly, I did.”

This skillset was hard-earned from day one, as Tim’s first car – a Datsun 240Z – turned out to be what he describes as ‘a bit of a bondo wagon’. He’d bought it at the age of just fifteen, and there’s no denying how awesome it must have seemed to own such a beautiful and revered classic at that age, but the rose tints quickly fell away as he realised just how much work he was facing to fix it up. Never one to shy away from a challenge, he tore into the rusty Datsun with ninja force, and it was there that Tim built the bedrock of skills that permeate this Mercedes today.

“I realised early on that I wanted to build cars for a living,” says Tim, “which wasn’t a popular choice with my parents, but it has been working out pretty good so far.” Yep, the evidence before us would suggest things are moving in the right direction. What’s particularly interesting to learn is that this car isn’t based on his trusty 2.5-16; Tim was reluctant to cut that up, so he sourced another project base. This car actually started out as a base-model 190E in a Champagne-on-brown colour scheme. The transformation, it’s fair to say, has been colossal. And even that’s an understatement.

So there are many out-of-the-ordinary elements of this car, and perhaps the most significant is that engine. No, it’s not a Merc motor. In fact, it’s a 408ci (6.7-litre) V8 from the lunatics at Texas Speed. This is a company which starts out with a General Motors 6.0-litre LQ9 iron block, and liberally festoons it with a stroker crank, forged pistons and rods, Precision Race Components cathedral-port alloy heads… this is very serious stuff. Nestling malevolently in the 190E’s bay, it’s now wearing a Late Model Engines billet intake manifold with Granatelli 103mm billet throttle bodies, and brilliantly there’s a pair of massive Precision turbos from Mirror Image as well. Given the nature of what F7LTHY does, this all had to be a showcase of fabrication prowess, and consequently you’ll find some very clever engineering in here. The mighty intercooler was fabbed in-house around a Mishimoto core, the custom exhaust system was made up using titanium from Ticon Industries, it’s all very smart. And if you thought that was special, wait till you find out what other weirdness has been going on…

The suspension setup is a bit of an unexpected treat. Naturally we’re used to seeing air-ride on project builds, but this is very far from an off-the-shelf kit. There’s wily cross-pollination at play here. “The suspension was sourced from an R129 Mercedes SL600; it was formerly sitting behind a V12,” Tim grins. “The 190E’s entire rear subframe was cut out and replaced with the R129 unit, as that is much more robust and much wider, ultimately allowing us to widen the Evo 2 kit we made for the body. The struts are D2 Racing air struts which have been great for showing the car, although once we start to have fun with it and do some track days I think we’ll be switching them out for coilovers.” The presence of the SL600 architecture means that the team were able to stay OEM with the brakes too, upgrading to the big-brake SL factory option that comprises 4-pot fronts and 2-pot rears.

A further surprise presents itself when you peep into the interior, as it’s not all stripped-out race car – it’s quite luxuriously trimmed. And yet it is stripped out. Sort of. It’s a bit of a melon-twister, to be honest. See, the bones of it are pure race car, removing the rear seats and what-have-you and installing a rollcage… but then the NRG carbon fibre seats were stripped down and rebuilt with red nappa leather, with the original dash and various other panels trimmed in the same sumptuous hide to match. There’s full soundproofing throughout the car, and the headlining and upper trim panels are all finished in light-absorbing dark Alcantara to complement the Cerakote Glacier Black finish on the ’cage. It’s all marvellously strange, and it’s the attention to detail which really makes it work as a whole. As can be said of the exterior treatment: that’s F7LTHY’s own custom Evo 2 widebody kit you’re seeing, the body painted in satin-finish Mercedes-Benz Selenite Grey. But this is no DTM pastiche. The custom front splitter, rear diffuser and swan-neck rear wing all help to hurtle the aesthetic vibe into 2020, each one picked out in black Cerakote to marry the exterior to the innards. The upshot of all this is something pretty terrifying, which is just the effect the F7LTHY team was hoping for.

The rich mix of approaches has certainly led to some interesting reactions. People who get it really, really get it. Those who don’t, well, they just don’t. “Responses to the car have been amazing,” Tim enthuses. “Of course there are haters, because the car isn’t all the way one thing or another; it’s not a purebred racer, it’s meant to be an aggressive street car and a display of our abilities at F7LTHY Fabrications.” Brilliantly, that’s just the way this massively over-engineered project has turned out. There are strange things happening over there on the North Pacific side. And long may the strangeness continue.

Tech spec: Modified Mercedes 190E

Styling:

F7LTHY Evo 2 widebody kit, Mercedes-Benz Selenite Grey satin-finish paint, custom front splitter, swan-neck rear wing and rear diffuser finished in Cerakote Glacier Black

Tuning:

Texas Speed (GM LQ9) 408ci long-block, Precision Race Components aluminium heads, Late Model Engines billet twin-throttle body intake manifold, Granatelli 103mm billet throttle bodies, twin Mirror Image Precision turbos, custom-fabricated intercooler with Mishimoto cores, custom-fabricated exhaust system in Ticon Industries titanium, Tremec T56 Magnum XL transmission with cryo-hardened gears, ACE twin-disc
race clutch

Chassis:

9x18in (front) and 12.5x18in (rear) custom-widened Fifteen52 Turbomac wheels, 255/35 (f) and 305/35 (r) Toyo Proxes RR tyres, R129 Mercedes SL600 V12 suspension with D2 Racing air struts, SL600 OE big-brake upgrade option (4-pot front, 2-pot rear)

Interior:

NRG carbon fibre seats – stripped and rebuilt with red Hydes nappa leather, dash and assorted panels trimmed in matching leather, headlining and upper panels trimmed in black Alcantara, sound deadening throughout, AiM digi-dash, Digital Delay Mega Panel, custom gear shifter, carbon flat-bottom steering wheel, rollcage finished in Cerakote Glacier Black

Thanks:

“Thank you to my family, my sponsors, and my team: Rob Mosser on fabrication, Tim Baillie (Installer of the Year 2019) on wiring and electronics, Brett Padula on paint and body, Luca Rizzo on mechanicals, and Greg and Sarah from @f7lthyinside on interior and upholstery.”

With an engine derived from the Audi S3 but less than half the overall mass, the KTM X-Bow can become a rather insane proposition when tinkered with as this Wimmer RS KTM X-Bow duo will now demonstrate…

Feature taken from Performance VW. Words: Sam Preston  Photos: Jordi Miranda

While we’re all familiar with Lotus founder Colin Chapman’s philosophy of ‘simply adding lightness’ to improve the way a sports car drives, it’s a mantra that could undoubtedly be implemented a little more generously in the modern automotive world we currently live in.

Take the latest Audi S3, for example – a fantastic all-round fast car, no doubt about it. In fact, we’d struggle to think of anything that could offer B-road destroying capabilities mixed with heated seat-adorned luxury out of the box in quite the same effortless manner.

But whether you like it or not, with a kerb weight that tops 1.5 tonnes when a slightly tubby driver is plonked behind the wheel, the S3 isn’t exactly what you’d call… lean, especially when compared to the much more svelte vehicles we grew up with a few decades back.

And this got us here at PVW Towers thinking… if that celebrated and incredibly tuneable 2.0-litre TFSI engine is as damn good as it is in this rather lardy setup, just how epic could it be if it was placed in a car that’d been put on a much stricter diet plan? The answer, as it turns out, was waiting for us in the particularly scenic North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany…

Welcome to the wonderful world of Wimmer Rennsporttechnik [RS]. Developing bespoke performance hardware and software solutions for its dedicated customer base across Europe and beyond since 1990, there’s not many moving objects that this acclaimed firm can’t make go faster.

“You name it, we’ve worked on it,” says Wimmer’s PR boss, Gesine Dageförde, as she proudly walks us around the impressive HQ. “We get owners of boats, sports cars, and everything in-between through our doors. No two ECUs are the same and it’s our bespoke approach that means we’ve built up such a large number of returning customers over the years.”

How does all of this relate to KTM’s arachnid-esque lightweight roadster, though? “We started working on the Audi-derived engines in the X-Bow for a few customers, once they realised they were of a quite different spec to those found in Audis and required specialist knowledge to get the most out of them,” Gesine explains. “This was during the early days of the model, and KTM approached us on numerous occasions asking if we’d consider being an official dealer once they saw just how profound our technical knowledge and experience was.”

Soon becoming the very first approved KTM X-Bow dealer/tuner in Germany, it didn’t take long for Wimmer RS to become the go-to place for owners of this curious small-production machine for hundreds of miles around. But even then, no-one could’ve predicted just how far they could push the formula in years to come…

It’s about time we introduced the two menacing cars you see before you, we reckon. Representing the cutting edge of what Wimmer RS has managed to achieve after working on over 300 X-Bows in the past few years, they’re certainly not for the faint-hearted.

Both sporting the firm’s comprehensive ‘Stage 5’ state of tune, each beast’s power output is ramped up from the factory 300bhp to over 480bhp, with 520Nm of torque to back it up. These bonkers figures come courtesy of forged pistons and a re-worked head with more aggressive camshafts also applied to that VAG-group lump sat out back, complete with a more efficient turbocharger and all the other fuelling and cooling goodies we’re used to seeing adorned to fast S3s and the like.

As well as its bespoke ECU calibrations (which are unsurprisingly applied with the purchase of this kit), Wimmer RS is also equally as renowned for its custom exhaust systems, which are made full use of here too. The result of all this work? The 0-62mph sprint is cut down to under 3 seconds, with 124mph reached in less than 10 – not numbers you could even dream of from a similarly-powered Audi S3!

It’s not just sheer grunt that’s been enhanced, though, with just as much attention poured into ensuring the highly-strung chassis and handling departments are made equally as formidable. Trick adjustable on-board coilovers are set up to perfection in-house to each customer’s specific road or track-biased needs, whilst those super-cool Taneisya forged alloys from Japan ensure even more unsprung kilos are reduced from each corner.

Whilst both cars featured here have boasted similar specs up until this point, it’s when it comes to the matter of shifting cogs that a fork in the road emerges. You’re probably most familiar with seeing X-Bows with that raw six-speed manual gearbox that was supplied with all models made for the first few years, but it’s interesting to see that the carbon-coloured ‘GT’ version (identified by the inclusion of a windscreen) has some sumptuous anodised flaps behind its dinky steering wheel, signifying it’s one of the newer breed of DSG-equipped cars now produced too.

This really helps get that extra RWD power down more effectively, Wimmer’s Gesine tells us, but don’t go thinking that it instantly makes it a complete breeze to drive… “We can no longer insure potential customers to take test drives in our high-power models,” she laughs. “You really need to gradually build up to driving these things fast, or you’ll be in for a shock. That said, they’re incredibly grippy and rewarding in a trained pair of hands.”

A driver’s car that demands respect is certainly a welcoming proposition in 2019, where Haldex AWD and stability aids aplenty have made it easier and safer than ever to drive our steeds at ten-tenths with very little practice required

Another service that Wimmer RS can offer and is effectively demonstrated with this duo of bold brutes is through the endless way you can personally style your X-Bow to suit your own tastes. Take the manual, ‘R’-spec’d example (signified by its lack of windscreen meaning it’s the most focused, neck-snapping road-legal version KTM produces). Like the carbon fibre car, it features Wimmer’s ‘Aerodynamic Package 2’, that uses angular splitters and wings to instantly add a tonne more aggression to the overall aesthetic.

The carbon-clad car takes things to the next level as far as road cars go, though, with what appears to be practically every one of the external body panels replaced for exposed carbon fibre affairs. When combined with that monocoque tub made from the same weaved material that acts as a focal point for every X-Bow out there, it really does make for a more eye-catching proposition than perhaps anything else you could possible buy with four wheels and a number plate.

KTM might sell around 200,000 motorcycles worldwide each year, but it’s somewhat disappointing to learn that less than 1500 X-Bows have been produced in the car’s decade-long lifetime. Offering an infinitely more memorable and breath-snatching experience than the hatchback it draws its engine from, maybe it’s time for us to all let our hair down a little more often…

Tech Spec: Wimmer RS KTM X-Bow (Carbon Fibre car)

Engine:

2.0-litre TFSI Audi engine, Wimmer RS ‘Stage 5’ tuning package (comprising forged pistons, ported head with high-flow camshafts, larger turbocharger, sports air filter, Wimmer RS sports exhaust system with 100 Zeller sports cat, upgraded in-tank fuel pump, upgraded high pressure fuel pump, additional transmission oil cooler, racing water pump and bespoke Wimmer RS ECU calibration), DSG twin-clutch semi-automatic gearbox with uprated clutch packs

Chassis:

17” (front) and 18” (rear) Taneisya forged lightweight alloy wheels in black, 215/45/17 (front) and 235/35/18 (rear) Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres, Wimmer wheel spacers (rear), three-way adjustable coilovers, Brembo 4-pot front brake calipers with grooved discs

Exterior:

KTM/Wimmer RS Aerodynamic Package 2 (comprising various carbon fibre air flaps), exposed carbon fibre front splitter, RR front and rear bonnet panels, GT-style rear spoiler and engine cover

Interior:

Factory exposed carbon monocoque interior

Tech Spec: Wimmer RS KTM X-Bow (Orange car)

Engine:

2.0-litre TFSI Audi engine, Wimmer RS ‘Stage 5’ tuning package (comprising forged pistons, ported head with high-flow camshafts, larger turbocharger, sports air filter, Wimmer RS sports exhaust system with 100 Zeller sports cat, upgraded in-tank fuel pump, upgraded high pressure fuel pump, additional transmission oil cooler, racing water pump and bespoke Wimmer RS ECU calibration), six-speed manual gearbox with uprated clutch

Chassis:

17” (front) and 18” (rear) Taneisya forged lightweight alloy wheels in black, 215/45/17 (front) and 235/35/18 (rear) Toyo Proxes R888 semi-slick tyres, Wimmer wheel spacers (rear), three-way adjustable coilovers, Brembo 4-pot front brake calipers with grooved discs

Exterior:

KTM/Wimmer RS Aerodynamic Package 2 (comprising various carbon fibre air flaps), carbon fibre front splitter, RR front and rear bonnet panels, GT-style rear spoiler and engine cover

Interior:

Factory exposed carbon monocoque interior