What is the best car to tune?

[waynne]

Here is the challenge - £10k budget - £7k on the car and £3k on tuning. The car can be any insurance group and will need to remain street legal.

What is the most power and quickest 0-60 time I can get for this money?

The car will need to remain reliable so this rules out adding a 100bhp shot of nitrous to a Saxo VTS (Freddie!)

I'm hoping to get some fresh ideas and end up with the fastest car possible.

[Freddie]

Bugger you! There is nothing 'unreliable' about a boosted Saxo on laughing gas!

Well, so long as you don't drive it that is!

There is so many cars and so many options, but being from the Saxo stable, I would like to suggest a Saxo shell with a Honda VTEC engine sitting in the boot!

Set up correctly you could have all the fun of a Saxo (as well as that oh-so desireable image) with the added bonus of a super reliable Jap engine with rear wheel drive! There would still be some issues with reliability, but with a professional set-up I think most of these could be overcome, and still be in budget!

There are so many cars; so many Modifications; I think overall it's down to personal preference.. In heinsight (sp?) I would like this as a fun car, but in reality, with 10k sitting in my bank account I might do something completely different!

And I'm not really on target with the 7k for the car and 3k for tuning, but it's still doable with 10k!

I think that on a more realistic note, one that just sprang to mind would be a Honda engined elise.. Again I think this is a realistic conversion, and Elise's are great track cars as they are. This set-up + boost can be pretty scary though! Mad power!

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...454906&q=elise

[the_names_james]

An old mini with a bike engine or 2?

[HDi fun]

Get a 406 Coupe with 2.2 HDi diesel unit - second user 2002 models well under £7k. Factory tune is 136bhp. Bung three hundred quid to Celtic (www.celtictuning.co.uk) and receive an ECP remap in return. Shoves out about 180bhp with torque over 300lbft. Run it on BP Ultimate Diesel and get a few percent more for the premium.

Keep the other £2700 in hand for front tyres, but allow a couple of quid for the extra insurance premium, because, you're going to declare it, of course, aren't you?

Seriously though, the 2.2 with a remap is a remarkable piece of kit. 0-62mph can be done in about 8 seconds if you're gentle with the clutch/rubber.

50-70 in fourth is stupidly quick, it in the jaguar XK8 / Boxster league. And; yes, I've driven a couple of them.

Rgds,

P.

[HDi fun]

Tyres at £2700 no, but you'll get through a few sets

[waynne]

Nice torque figure - I guess thats why the rubber vanishes! I actually like the look of the 406 coupes - prob take off the Pug badge though!

[HDi fun]

That's always the problem - it's a French Pug, not a BMW or Merc, If you can live without the badge/keyring etc. then the 2.2 HDi is a stonker. At the age of 36 (yep, I'm old!) it's a good way to play unfair games with three litre petrol cars.

Lose the badge for sure, engage Celtic for an ECU re-map and go and charge about in a pretty car in a way that disturbs owners of Mercedes SLK320's.

Diesel engines can deliver silly performance now, manufacturers keep the bhp down just so that can justify selling the occasional petrol fuelled car.

[the_names_james]

After driving my GT for a couple of days, I have to say they're awesome. Standard they do 0-62 in 6.8.

You could buy a decent GT for £3500, or a Glanza for about 1k more, then throw £6500 at the engine, gearbox, suspension and brakes. It would be mental and I'm sure you could play with the scooby and evo boys all day long.

[waynne]

Saw a BMW Alpina on Autotrader for about £7G. standard 0-60 is about 5.5 (still researching the model range) I reckon with a remap it can get to a sub 4 second to 60. (These cars are over £45k new.)

I bet the EVO and Impreza are pretty cheap now and can be modded quite heavily - but I guess they are a bit predictable and really want to consider all of the options. (This is a fairly hypothetical excersice - I'm still impressed by my Audi 1.8T sport which gives me 38mpg! )

[Freddie]

38 MPG?!

Expect to see another 'My Car is on Ebay' thread soon.