Right foot buried against the firewall, my head
is thrust back with the urgency that only a boosted turbo engine can deliver. I
bump the sequential shifter up a gear and that avalanche of torque again has
us hurtling down the road. We exchange nods of confirmation; damn fast car this one. And then, with the throttle eased back, we settle
into a very refined and quiet urban trundle.
Nothing remarkable about that except the fuel
consumption display on this car was showing an incredible 5 litres per 100km.
Yep, 5 litres per 100km. This is our first encounter with an aftermarket enhanced
turbo diesel and, oh boy, are we blown away!
It’s the first day of our most recent AutoSpeed
editorial trip and we’re already left speechless. Little did we know there was to be
an almost never-ending succession of high performance cars to come!
That Turbo Diesel
The modified turbo diesel that blew our socks off
on the first day of our editorial trip was nothing more than a Volkswagen Golf
TDI 2-litre. But with an Oettinger engine management recalibration, there was
enough performance to drop the jaw of anyone who doubts turbo diesels.
According to Oettinger data, peak power rockets
from 103kW (standard) to 125kW and torque is an almost unbelievable 380Nm at
just 2000 rpm. In real-world driving (where you can’t hold the engine at
the redline) the tweaked Golf TDI has truly butt-kicking performance. If anybody
dared to challenge the Volkswagen from a standing start they’d almost certainly
get toasted. The just-put-your-foot-down-and-go torque would easily leave an early WRX behind up to 60 km/h... unless of course the WRX launched each time at peak revs...
We won’t spoil our upcoming feature article but we
can tell you that driving this little beast really opened our eyes. The next
generation of eco-friendly performance is here!
Golf GTi
A few days after driving the Golf TDI we had a
similar opportunity to drive a Golf GTi (petrol turbo) with an APR engine
management upgrade.
After being assured we’d be blown away by the
performance of the GTi we were, umm, impressed – but nothing more. For sure, the
APR tuned GTi would out-muscle the TDI on the open road. But so what?
Aftermarket companies have been offering hot tunes for more than a decade –
especially in the case of petrol turbo engines where it’s all too easy to
increase boost pressure.
That said, the remapped Golf GTi was an impressive
performance hatch – but it didn’t come like a bolt from the blue like its diesel
stablemate.
Targa Mustang
Here is one of the most hairy chested cars you’ll
see on a public road.
Provided for a test by Craig Dean of Sports and
Luxury Cars, this current model Ford Mustang is built to Saleen specs with a
bolt-on supercharger and all the good bits. Its purpose: to rip up the bitumen
in Targa Tasmania!
Despite its menacing appearance, the Saleen spec
Mustang was surprisingly docile and tractable. The blown V8 pumped out a linear
progression of torque and really got sprinting at high revs. The new ‘Stang may
use an antiquated live rear axle but we can tell you there’s absolutely no
problem transferring grunt to the bitumen. In the dry anyway.
It’s not the sort of car we’d buy – and at more
than AUD$150,000 we couldn’t afford to – but we appreciated the opportunity to
drive it. This car has tons of character and perfectly fits the mould
of a retro performance car.
Beemer M3
An interesting car this one. I’ve always loved the
classy appearance of the E36 BMW M3 and, having read all of the contemporary
road tests, I had held it as a performance benchmark. But not any more.
The M3’s steering is typically BMW slow and vague
around centre, much of the interior is old fashioned (the trip computer gobbles
up a full DIN space!) and the performance is hardly a knockout. In fact, lined
up against a Volkswagen Passat 2-litre turbo FSI press car which we had at the
same time, the M3 pulled away only at high speed.
But I must admit that the M3 engine was right up
there with the best. Wonderfully responsive, top-notch acoustics and the
tractability was extreme – fifth gear could comfortably take you from around 50
km/h to a top speed of 250 km/h... And even by today’s standards, it’s quite an
achievement to extract 210kW from a 3-litre engine that’s not helped by a turbo
or supercharger.
A once remarkable car that now falls into the
category of a modern classic.
Ford Focus Frustration
Having recently reviewed the Ford Focus XR5 Turbo
I was enthusiastic to cover PowerChip’s newly developed flash enhancement. The
factory XR5T offers a wonderful spread of performance, so how good would an
aftermarket tuned version be?
Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to
expectation.
Sure, the re-mapped car went harder than stock
(thanks largely to some extra boost pressure) but it also had a stutter
at high engine load. Hmmm. We relayed this problem to PowerChip and, after they carried out some
further ECU fiddling, we tee’d up another drive the following night.
Same problem.
We then offered a third and final
opportunity to get the tune right. PowerChip took up the challenge, invested
more time clacking away on the laptop and invited us for yet another drive. And,
bugger me, the car still stuttered – though slightly less than
before...
But later in our trip we were taken for a
brief ride in another XR5 Turbo with bolt-on mods and a different type of engine
management rewrite. And much to our amazement, we noticed the same stutter occurring
at high load.
Looks like the XR5 Turbo isn’t as easy
to tune as first thought!
The Oddball Van
One of the most interesting vehicles we pedalled
during the week was a Japanese market Toyota Hi-Ace Super Custom Limited turbo
diesel 4WD. It was graciously provided by Craig Dean of Sports
and Luxury Cars.
In the past we’ve driven these incredibly
spacious, incredibly comfortable and incredibly weird vans - and we’ve loved
‘em. The combination of effortless turbo diesel grunt, electric curtains, triple
row moon roofs and ample sprawling space make this one of the best long distance
machines you can buy. Of course, nobody ever believes it when we tell them!
The 4WD version of the Super Custom Limited was
more stable and less prone to inside wheel spin than the rear-drive
versions we’ve driven previously. But when the engine suddenly decided to stop, we didn’t get much on an opportunity to
sample the handling. It turns out the
fuel tank was dry – even though the gauge still showed quarter of a tank.
This photo shows Craig Dean coming to our roadside
rescue with a can of diesel. Ooops... Just as well we'd lent him the press car Passat!
Peter Fitzgerald’s Audi S4
When Peter Fitzgerald told us about the mods to
his Audi S4 bi-turbo we were a little reserved about covering it as a
feature car. But driving it to and from the photo location proved beyond doubt
this is car that must be spoken about.
Now available second-hand for around AUD$60,000,
the Audi S4 bi-turbo offers w-a-y more tuning potential than the current V8
model. Bung on an exhaust, air intake and revised ECU mapping and you’ve got a
streeter that’s hard to beat. It’ll pull in every gear, it’s refined,
comfortable, safe, Euro chic and genuinely useable.
Mr Fitzgerald had also treated the car to an
aftermarket suspension set-up with custom softened damper valving. The result
was a firm but completely un-harsh ride. The perfect match to a car that oozes
style.
Mock MotorSport BA Falcons
ON the final day of our trip we drove two cars
from the Jim Mock MotorSport stable – a tuned BA XT and a modified XR6 Turbo.
When driven back-to-back, the contrast between these two cars was absolutely incredible.
Jim Mock and his son, Brendan, have worked
tirelessly extracting power from the atmo Ford 4-litre – their development mule
BA is now running hot cams, an aftermarket intake manifold and pumping out more
peak power than a stock XR6 Turbo. But top-end power is one thing – all-round
performance is another.
The heavily modified atmo engine sacrifices torque
in the low/mid rev range so, in the majority of driving conditions, the car
feels slower than a stocker. Only at high revs does it get up an’ show its
worth.
But the XR6 Turbo we drove was an utterly different story.
With a Jim Mock Motorsport high stall converter fitted to the four-speed auto
trans (in addition to bigger injectors, an upgrade exhaust, intercooler and
management reflash), this car shows tremendous straight-line response and
performance. In fact, when booted off the line it left a pair of long black marks on the bitumen... without even trying.
Other
Cars Driven...
The
cars mentioned here are just a selection of the car we tested during our
editorial trip. Other machines include a Volkswagen Passat FSI Turbo, Ford
Territory Turbo, Hyundai Santa Fe, Nissan Tiida, a tuned HSV Clubsport and a
current Mustang GT. Stay tuned for full articles on all the cars we drove!
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