It’s got oil sheikh chic and plutocrat flair in abundance, but this bagged Bentley is thoroughly down-to-earth. With deep roots in the VAG scene, Dan Steele has taken the Continental GT formula and reimagined it for a new generation…

Feature taken from Fast Car. Words Dan Bevis Photography Si Gray

There are few automotive brands with quite the majesty and effortless class of Bentley, let alone the heritage. With the company enjoying its centenary year, 2019 was awash with Bentley-themed events, celebrations, hooplas and extravaganzas. From Blue Train hijinks to Le Mans blowers, all eyes have been on the iconic winged badge… and it’s not just a party for fans of vintage racers; no, if you’re more into modern-era motors than what Ettore Bugatti famously damned with faint praise as ‘the world’s fastest lorries’, the 21st-century Bentleys have been enjoying renewed appreciation among enthusiasts and tuners alike.

Of course, some people were into all this stuff long before the centenary celebrations hit. When you view the recent Bentleys as part of the wider spectrum of the VAG oeuvre, it makes a lot of sense to hold these cars up as the pinnacle of aspiration for people who spent their formative years spannering on Volkswagens. The respect has been readily apparent for some time on the show scene, with more than a few people bolting genuine Bentley wheels onto Golfs, Leons, Octavias and what-have-you, but the super-premium nature of what the brand represents means that they’re still pie-in-the-sky as a buying proposition for most. While it’s true that the evergreen Bentley Continental GT has just about dipped into what some lucky people may view as ‘excellent value’, it’s not exactly the sort of car you can pick up at the age of 21, slam over some shiny rims and roll into your local stance meet. Not unless your dad owns a premiership football team. No, you need to be a proper O.G. to get involved in this sort of caper, and the owner of the flawless Conti that’s glimmering under the studio lights with us today has been a player at this game for longer than many readers would be able to remember. It’s taken a quarter-century of hot rides and deep-seated modding prowess to elevate to this stellar level, and the bagged Bentley you see before you represents a coda to an automotive symphony that’s been swelling for decades.

“I’ve been modding cars for twenty-five years,” says Dan Steele, the man lucky enough to call this motor his own, “and I’ve always been a VW man.” He’s not kidding; chief among his previous projects were a Corrado G60 in Nugget Yellow, a B5 Passat V6 4Motion, a Mk4 Golf R32, a Mk4 Polo G40 with a turbo conversion, and a Golf Rallye that was fitted with a 1.8T and evolved into a full-on show car. Magazine features abounded for a number of these projects, demonstrating the skill and care which Dan invariably lavishes upon his prized possessions, and so the Bentley was the next logical step. After all, when you’ve been levelling up in the relentless manner that he has, eventually you’re bound to arrive at the boss level. That’s just science.

“I’ve always wanted a Bentley, although it is basically a glorified Audi S8 long-wheelbase,” he grins, and that’s not a self-deprecating knock, it’s a badge of honour. For a dyed-in-the-wool VAG appreciator, this posh Audi signals the ultimate evolution of a timeworn formula, taking everything Dan knew about project cars and refracting it through a super-premium filter. “I bought the Continental in 2016; it was all completely standard, and it ended up sitting on axle stands for six months with no wheels and no interior while I planned out what to do with it.” With so much experience honed over so many years, you can be damn sure that this guy had a clear picture in his head of what he hoped to achieve, and there was no need to rush. This was something that needed to be done right rather than simply done fast. The model Dan chose for this project was a Triple Black Edition, the uber-shadowy spec essential to the effect he wanted to achieve, as the plan was to retrim the interior in bright jaffa orange to act as a searing counterpoint to the gloss black interior trims and, naturally, that gleaming midnight-chic exterior. The reason for this was that his Golf Rallye had also sported the same colour scheme, so this represented a beautiful sense of progression and evolution from one build to the next.

The task of retrimming the interior was handed to Optimus Trimmers in Glasgow, who painstakingly recovered the seats, headlining, door cards, dash and armrest to rework the innards in a glorious riot of citrus-hued extravagance. The custom interior work extends to the boot build, which has also been trimmed in sumptuous jaffa leather and carbon fibre trim, to artfully accentuate the Champagne bottles and crown-shaped ice bucket in fine style.

There’s another dimension to this colour scheme, something that conceptually stretches far deeper. You see, while Dan’s bread-and-butter today is as a marine engineer on super-yachts, he spent many years working on ultra-deepwater offshore drilling rigs, drilling for oil; it’s for this reason that the Bentley is affectionately referred to as ‘Project Black Gold’ – it’s a sense of all-pervading premium and high-end luxury, underpinned by the biological necessity of the slippery dino-juice that keeps everything churning behind the scenes. Which acts as a decent metaphor for the Continental GT as a whole really; while it’s a fabulously appointed luxury grand tourer, it’s easy to forget that all that effortless power comes from a sodding great 6.0-litre twin-turbo W12 grafting away beneath the bonnet. The fact that Dan’s had his W12 remapped to a brawny 680bhp serves to neatly underline this point.

So with the innards looking appropriately premium, it was essential to get the big Bentley sitting pretty over just the right rolling stock. The altitude angle was taken care of by the application of a bespoke air-ride system with custom bags and struts, expertly engineered by the maestros at Intermotiv; Dan opted to retain the factory air management system and re-program the VAG-COM, then design his own ‘Dump It’ control box to allow the system to be aired out and lay the car on the ground. And you can’t really miss the wheels that it’s dramatically airing out over, being as they are a fully custom creation to his own exacting specifications. The starting point was a staggered set of 21-inch Rotiform BLQ-T, with delicious rose gold centres and polished lips, which have been cunningly rebuilt into a four-piece construction with the centres spaced out 40mm to create an effect Dan refers to as ‘Boudicea’s chariot’. (You’ll remember from your history GCSE that the scythed chariots of ancient Rome had gleaming weaponry poking out from their wheels; the difference here is that Dan’s instead weaponised your sense of intrigue.)

With the desired effect magnificently achieved, the final flourish was to gently clean up the exterior lines, smoothing the bumpers and de-chroming the front grilles to further amp up the black/orange/black malevolence, like some sleek but enraged tiger.

When the Conti debuted in its initial guise at the Let’s Stance show in 2017, it immediately won ‘Best in Show’ as well as ‘Best Wheels’, and it’s been raking in the silverware ever since. With the custom coilover/air-ride setup and four-piece wheel rebuild in 2018, attention elevated to unprecedented levels, and the jaw-dropped crowds circulating around this ultra-swank build have been growing ever since, as Dan gently tweaks and refines the GT into the best possible version of itself.

So while the purists, collectors, tycoons and concours buffers have been busying themselves tremendously throughout 2019, flicking specks of dust from their 1920s racers and luxuriating in the glow of a brand well lived, Dan’s had the jump on all of them. With an extensive history of refining and perfecting VAG builds, this Conti GT is the ultimate interpretation of a game he’s been playing for years. The elemental purity of black gold, reimagined for a 21st-century audience. WO Bentley’s original mission statement was ‘to build a fast car, a good car, the best in its class’, and Dan’s following that timeworn sentiment to the letter.

TECH SPEC: BENTLEY CONTINENTAL GT

Styling:
Front and rear bumpers smoothed, de-chromed front grilles

Tuning:
6.0-litre W12 twin-turbo, carbon hydro-dipped engine covers, remapped, 6-speed Tiptronic auto
Power: 680bhp

Chassis:
9.5x21in (front) and 10.5x21in (rear) Rotiform BLQ-T with rose gold centres and polished lips – custom-built into 4-piece split-rims with additional rim spacer rings, Stance 35mm spacers, stretched Pirelli tyres, bespoke Intermotiv air-ride system with custom bags and struts, custom air tanks, Viair compressor, Airmatics drop links, with OEM Bentley management and custom-developed Dump It control unit

Interior:
Full retrim by Optimus Trimmers in jaffa orange leather – including seats, headlining, door cards, dash and armrest, custom boot build with Champagne bottles, glowing crown ice cooler and ice, carbon boot trim and jaffa orange leather trim, Bentley infotainment unit, Audison Bit One processor, Alpine PDX V9 1400w RMS amplifier, Rockford Fosgate Punch 12in sub, 2x Focal PS 165 FS 3-way components front and rear, iPhone/iPod integration

BMW’s M2 Competition is a pretty devastating weapon straight from the showroom floor. But this aggressively tuned example? This one’s as hard as nails…

Feature taken from Fast Car magazine. Words Daniel Bevis Photography Daniel Pullen

BMW’s M division has always dabbled craftily with the fusion of the suave and the aggressive. Picture a stylish, crisply cut Savile Row suit; perhaps a sober black with a delicate charcoal pinstripe. But within it resides not an accountant or a lawyer, but a snarling bear with glistening rows of knife-sharp teeth, its rippling muscles barely contained by the genteel fabric. That’s basically what the original BMW M5 was. Unleashed upon the crowded executive/midsize market in 1985, it took many a boy racer by surprise at the lights, looking for all the world like the motorway-munching wheels of a travelling salesman (albeit one who was doing rather well for himself).

Beneath that stylish suit hid the chassis from the M535i and the engine from the spaceship-like M1; it had 282bhp, which was a lot for the mid-eighties. Hell, it’s a lot now. And ever since that original foray into the entertaining world of stealth ballistics, the M5 has consistently remained a paragon of neatly tailored brutality and, a few generations down the line, its influence has spread throughout the ever-expanding M-pire with subtle but devastating force.

Look at the M2, which is currently lurking malevolently in the showrooms. There’s a car with a twisted development story – it’s based on the 2 Series, which was launched to replace the coupe and convertible variants of the 1 Series. So it’s already a confused proposition, being an upscaled badge on a lengthened version of a hatchback which, oddly, is the size of the older versions of the saloons that sit above it in the model line-up. Keeping up with all this? Stick with it, it gets weirder. BMW decided to amp up the details to create the M2, an entry-level proposition for the broader M catalogue and a spiritual successor to the old 1 Series M Coupe.

But as the project developed, it became increasingly apparent that the M division doesn’t really do ‘entry-level’, and the whole thing started to get a bit crazy. The M2 was fitted with a twin-turbo 3.0-litre straight-six, good for a vivid 365bhp, and you could either choose a 6-speed manual or a 7-speed M-DCT dual-clutch transmission, the latter of which featured a ‘Smokey Burnout’ mode as standard (seriously). The N55 motor was stuffed with pistons pinched from the M3/M4, and the chassis sported extensive lightweight aluminium componentry to strip out oodles of weight.

…and then things became even more bonkers. You see, the car we have before the camera today is no ordinary M2. And we’re not specifically talking about the aftermarket upgrades; the key point here is that this is an M2 Competition. And that one word stands for a lot. What’s the difference? The standard M2 runs the aforementioned N55 straight-six with the M3/M4 pistons, but the M2 Competition takes that idea a step further by essentially pinching the entire twin-turbo S55 engine from the M3/M4, lightly modifying cooling and lubrication for the M2 application. All of this gives the perky two-door a handy 405bhp. That’s a huge amount of horsepower to shovel into a car with such a compact profile, which serves to prove how the M division really is kicking out the jams these days. BMW has basically modified the M2 on buyers’ behalf and sold it with a warranty.

So, the M2 Competition serves as a pretty bloody rambunctious base for a project, you’ll no doubt agree. And sidling into the story here from stage left are the guys from Car Audio Security – an aftermarket powerhouse with a long and illustrious history of taking desirable motors and making them, well, more desirable. The modus operandi is clear, owing to the fact that Car Audio Security don’t only deal with matters pertaining to car audio and security; both of those elements are at the forefront of their builds, of course, but the fact that this company is also an approved dealer for Rotiform wheels and Air Lift suspension means that these cars all share common values. In short, they get dropped into the weeds on saucy rims. And that’s precisely what’s happened here.

Snapping up a showroom-fresh example of the factory-hot-rodded Competition model, this collective of mad scientists wasted no time in tearing into the stock suspension; the M2’s now wearing a full Air Lift setup, complete with custom boot install and the air-ride controller neatly mounted in the lower dash. This is a seamless integration in the interior, which features all of the fancy bits you’d expect of an M car (particularly those awesome seats – just look at them, they’re magnificent) along with the desirable carbon pack.

And if carbon fibre’s your bag, look at what’s been going on outside. That crisp Alpine White is masterfully counterpointed by a tasteful smattering of carbon – and the more you look, the more you find. At the nose we spot carbon kidney grilles, and a glossy splitter at the bottom; moving to the side we find the material upgrade taking over the mirrors, the wing vents and the lower splitters, and at the tail end there’s a lip spoiler on the bootlid and a racy diffuser down below.

The carbon offers the perfect motorsport vibe to take the M2 Competition to the next level – an effect hugely amplified by the wheel choice. Check ’em out, they even say ‘MOTORSPORT’ in huge letters on each one! These are Rotiform’s fresh BUC-M design, a Touring Car-inspired multispoke affair that suits the coupe – quite literally – down to the ground.

The overall package is simple but effective, and very much in-keeping with the M division’s own vibe: the fusion of the suave and the aggressive. This M2 just happens to wear its aggression a little more openly – yes, it’s still a snarling bear in a Savile Row suit… but this one’s got neck tattoos and chunky signet rings. The full M experience, but with a harder edge.

TECH SPEC: BMW M2

Styling:
Alpine White, carbon fibre front splitter, carbon wing mirrors, carbon kidney grilles, carbon boot spoiler, carbon side vents, carbon side splitters, carbon rear diffuser

Tuning:
N55B30T0 3.0-litre twin-turbo straight-six, 7-speed dual-clutch M-DCT

Chassis:
8.5×19” Rotiform BUC-M wheels, Nankang AS-2+ tyres, Air Lift Performance suspension

Interior:
Carbon pack, Air Lift controller installed in lower dash

As you reach that point in your life when you’ve bought a practical estate car, it’s time to be sensible… isn’t it? No, Jack Hutchins doesn’t think so – his grown-up tuned MINI R55 Clubman’s packing air-ride, Rotiforms, and 290bhp…

Feature taken from Fast Car magazine. Words Joe Partridge Photos Matt Clifford

Life, as the internet is always keen to point out, comes at you fast. You start out tearing about in hot hatches and before you know it, you’ve unexpectedly grown up and you find yourself trundling around in an estate car, desperately trying to figure out where your youth went.

Jack Hutchins, however, is a guy with vision. He’s not prepared to sit back and let life happen to him, he’s out there in forthright fashion actively pursing the next stages of his own personal development. It’s helped enormously that his first car wasn’t exactly your average first car – whereas most of us kick off with a crap twenty-year-old 1.0 runabout, Jack’s debut ride was an R56 MINI Cooper. What’s more, it was practically brand new – he bought it cheap with heavy accident damage, expertly repaired it all by himself, then set about fitting air ride and custom audio and CCW wheels. He’s a fella with a clear idea of what he wants. That car was good enough to earn itself a magazine feature and now, at the tender age of 22, he’s got his second feature car – a sensible-but-not-really R55 Clubman. “I chose an R55 this time as I wanted to stay with MINI because they’re fun to drive, but I needed the extra practicality,” he explains. “Yes, the Clubman isn’t massive, but it’s perfect for what I need it for – my R56 was impractical for travelling around due to the air tank and subwoofer filling the boot.”

Sound reasoning, and what’s also impressive to note is that while the old hatch was in Cooper spec, the Clubman Jack’s driving now is a full-fat John Cooper Works (JCW). Evidently the insurance cliff edge that drops away when you hit 21 is very much still a thing…

“Funnily enough, when I first started looking for Clubmans I was actually looking at diesels!” he laughs. “I liked the idea of having a practical and reliable daily car. It was only a week before I found this JCW that I was on the phone to a company up north about purchasing a Hampton Edition diesel, however, it had already been sold. I gave it another few days of searching and found this car online at UKI Sudbury; it was a little out of budget, but it was the best spec I’d seen for sale and it had the newer N18 engine. The JCW Clubmans are quite rare anyway, so I thought I needed to grab it while I could.”

And so with impeccable logic, Jack scooped it up, brought it home, and immediately started taking it to pieces. As one does. Within a week it was wearing the air-ride setup and CCW wheels from the old R56, and was ready for its first show! Infuriatingly, though, he had to attend said show with one cardboard window after someone broke into the Clubman and stole his camera gear, but such hurdles don’t cause strong-willed types like Jack to stumble for long.

As the car fell into daily use, our man gradually began to pool together desirable upgrades as and when they became available at the right price. The JCW is fabulously well-optioned in factory form, so he already had a head start on the juicy specs and it was more a case of enhancing than starting from scratch. Various carbon fibre trims, a JCW scuttle and strut brace, and a colour-coded Cooper fuel filler found their way into the mix, before Jack set about smoothing little details here and there to give the Clubman a classy and subtle OEM+ vibe. Being a true-blue wheel hound, it wasn’t long before he started considering his rolling stock, concluding that he fancied a set of BBS splits but was happy to wait until the right ones came along – in the meantime, he’s packing staggered Rotiform RSEs with some truly interesting tyre size choices. (A fair amount of stretch, which allows them to tuck in perfectly when he airs out… and just check out the rubber band nature of the 185/35 fronts!)

By the time early 2019 came around, Jack started thinking about readying the car for the trek to Wörthersee – which, of course, isn’t just about Volkswagens any more. The annual stance-scene pilgrimage to Austria embraces modifications with global influence, and Jack’s new USDM-spec arches fit the bill perfectly. But the makeover plans weren’t just about bolting on some new plastics. No, he was going all-in for this trip. “Parking the car up in the garage, I removed the rear wipers, both bumpers, intercooler, intake pipes, downpipe and rear light surrounds,” he explains. “The car was now ready for paint! I then refitted the intercooler, decat downpipe, spark plugs, intake filter, diverter valve, boost pipes and Powerflex engine mount so the car was able to drive, and dropped it off at Sprint Autos in Yardley Wood. When I collected it a week later, the screw holes in the front bumper had been fixed, the rear bumper freshened up, reflectors smoothed, rear wiper holes smoothed, door dinks removed and various other little bits fixed up. I decided not to do the usual ‘de-chrome everything’ job that a lot of people do, I wanted the keep it looking fairly stock with just my own stamp on it.”

Once he had the car back, Jack renewed the CV boots, water pump pulley and tensioner, and gave it a full service, readying it for a remap and a bit more power. He then busied himself wiring in the USDM arches to the existing sidelights, and fitting height sensors for the air ride so that the Air Lift 3H management’s self-levelling function could be enabled and the car would maintain its set height, regardless of what he threw in the boot or how many passengers he was carrying. The final flourish was to complete the boot build. Again, practicality was the watchword, so he trimmed the spare wheel well in black carpet to match the interior, tucked the wiring and compressor out of sight, and simply made a low-key feature of the satin black AccuAir ENDO air tank and Air Lift Performance management block so that it still oozed show-car appeal.

“I added in some little extras,” Jack continues, “like the water trap drain hose under the car, the pressure release valve, and the handy addition of a quick release for air tools such as the tyre pump. All the tools and emergency kits are stowed away in the lower section of the boot in a genuine MINI rubber boot lining, making it easy to remove everything to get to the tank and quick-release valve. Then, to finish everything off, I took the Clubby to Millsys Autos in Nuneaton for a weekend to get it Stage 2 remapped.” The JCW-spec N18 is a formidable thing, and Jack’s up-specced it with an Airtec intercooler and Scorpion decat; the JCW intake is already superb so instead of junking and replacing, he’s upgraded that with an ITG filter. The car hasn’t been on the dyno yet, but given the specs it’s safe to assume a figure somewhere in the region of 290bhp.

“I’ve driven the car near enough every day since I bought it and, touch wood, haven’t had any major issues,” he says. “It’s carried everything from my luggage around Europe to a VW Beetle engine around the UK! I’ve had a few people say they don’t like the look of Clubmans, but I haven’t had anyone say that they don’t like the look of this one…” All of which makes Jack’s point rather well. The versatility of the MINI range meant that he could upscale his beloved older project to something similar but bigger, and along the way he’s gained a whole load more power and oodles of eye-catching custom ideas – but above all this was built to be used. Don’t let the show-car finish fool you, that’s exactly what happens. Sure, life can come at you fast – but if, like Jack, you’ve got a clear idea of what you want, you can take it all at your own pace.

TECH SPEC: MINI R55 Clubman

Styling:
USDM front arches, rear reflectors and wipers smoothed, de-badged, Cooper fuel cap, JCW scuttle vents, blackline headlights and side repeaters, LED DRLs.

Tuning:
N18 1.6-litre turbo, Stage 2 Manic remap, Airtec intercooler, Scorpion decat, GFB diverter valve, Forge boost pipes, ITG air filter, Evo X spark plugs, Powerflex engine mount insert, 6-speed manual. Power: 290bhp

Chassis:
8x17in ET30 (front) and 9x17in ET30 (rear) Rotiform RSE cast wheels, 185/35 (f) and 195/40 (r) tyres, Air Lift Performance front and rear shocks, Air Lift 3H management and height sensors, and JCW strut brace.

Interior:
Factory options inc. heated front screen, panoramic sunroof, Harmon Kardon speakers, heated Recaro seats, 2x seats in rear (rather than the usual 3), leather dash top and Alcantara dash trims, carbon fibre gear knob and handbrake handle, carbon fibre speedo surround, carbon door handles and door trims, spare wheel-well trimmed in black carpet with air compressor, air tank and management.

Thanks:
“I’d like to thank my Dad for letting me use his tools, Tony from Sprint Autos in Yardley Wood for spending the time sorting out the paint and bodywork, and the MiniFOO guys for all the help with the questions I’ve been asking! I’d also like to thank the two companies, Shift.Co and Millsys Autos for sorting out parts and tuning.”