| Part 1: In which I have an epiphany | |
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In which I have an epiphany Track day cars seem to be a big thing lately. It’s a great idea, having a road legal car set aside for track use. Cheaper than a racing car and there’s no mucking about with trailers when it comes to visit the track. It’s still an expensive proposition though, and not everyone is in a situation where they could justify owning one car for every day driving and another for the track. With four cars already in the driveway and a garage full of tools there just wasn’t any room for another car at my house. That left me with one option: transformation. I decided to turn a car into something that was comfortable enough for daily use, fun to drive on weekends and road trips, and able to stand up to the odd day of track abuse. Keep it simple My car at the time was a 1991 Holden Commodore. I can hear some of you groaning already, but its reputation as a Bogan chariot aside (the Bogan is a rough equivalent of the Chav in the UK, or White Trash in the USA) it’s really not a bad car. Mine was roomy, comfortable, reasonably powerful, good on fuel (provided you were careful with the right foot) and easy to maintain. These are all fine qualities, ones that suited my purpose when I originally bought it, but they weren’t really what I had in mind for this project. There were some more serious drawbacks though. First and foremost it was automatic, the biggest deal-breaker there ever was in terms of enjoying driving. It’s handling, while better than average for a mass produced car of that size and weight, was not inspiring in any way. The steering was numb, body roll was significant, and all the feedback from the chassis seemed to be shouting ‘body flex!’. I spent ages looking at parts to convert it to manual, pricing brake upgrades and researching the best way to increase power output and firm up the suspension. If I did that, then it’d need wider tyres and bigger wheels. A stronger diff with LSD and a better ratio. Perhaps a small roll cage and some welding to stiffen the body up... the list grew, and so did the rough price estimate. Was I really willing to spend this much time and money just to try and make a family sedan into something it wasn’t designed to be? Then it hit me: Why don't I get a better car? One that was designed to be nimble and sporty from the outset. That’d save me heaps of time and money, and I could put that towards other things, like a holiday or... well, who was I kidding? I had some spare time, a bit of cash, and the desire to modify a car. I knew where this was headed. Something better, but what? I started looking around for the ideal car. It had to be small, light, and rear wheel drive. Something with a fairly high power to weight ratio, a good front/rear weight balance and a tight chassis. My first inclination was a Mk1 or Mk2 Ford Escort. I had one as my first car and have owned at least six of them over the years. Most of what I learnt about driving was learned in an Escort. Unfortunately because of their classic status, even average examples are commanding some crazy prices, and parts for cars made around 40 years ago are becoming a little tricky to source. Ask a wrecking yard in Melbourne if they have any Escorts and if the response isn’t laughter it’s a dumbfounded look, like you’ve just asked them where they keep the Faberge eggs. I considered a couple of mid engine cars like the Fiat X/19 or one of the first MR2’s, but here in Australia they’re a bit of a rarity and tricky to find parts for; most small, sporty, rear wheel drive cars from the 70’s also fell into that category. From the 80’s onwards rear wheel drive in small cars seemed to be in steady decline all round. Except at BMW. BMW have always prided themselves on making ‘Ultimate Driving Machines’, which usually means as near as possible to a 50:50 weight balance and rear wheel drive. In the early 80’s they hit what I think was a sweet spot for the 3 Series, the E30. It was small, but not cramped. It was well equipped, but managed to keep the weight down to just over a ton. In profile, it has that classic big box between two smaller boxes proportion to it that just seems so right in a car (if you don’t know what I mean, ask a 4 year old to draw you a car), and if you catch it at the right angle there’s a subtle aggression to the styling. There’s quite a few E30’s in Australia, in fact, there’s plenty worldwide, with almost 2.5 million made between 1981 and 1994. There’s a huge community for modifications and maintenance, and an equally big market for parts. Best of all, it’s a four cylinder sized car with plenty of room for a six cylinder and thankfully BMW went and shoved one in there. Easy. Almost too easy... So hunting for an E30 I went. Ideally I wanted an unmodified one, a blank slate with low kilometres and no significant accident damage. A tall order for something a couple of decades old, but I was prepared to spend my weekends for the next few months traipsing all over the state looking for the ideal candidate. It came as a total surprise to me when I discovered, on my second day of searching, the perfect car about 20 minutes away. A 1985 323i manual coupe. The body was excellent, it was mechanically sound and it even had a decent service history. The only things I wasn’t sure about were the sunroof and the colour. I’ve always thought of sunroofs as an all round bad equation, an increase in weight (and well above the roll centre at that) equalling a decrease in body stiffness. Because of the cars condition I let it slide and, after living with it for a while, I’m glad I did. There’s something to be said for being able to open the top on a warm sunny day. Even on a cold, rainy day it’s nice to crack it just a bit and get some air flow that doesn’t leave you with an ear full of water. It’s making me rethink my stance on convertibles, though it could be a while before I make that leap. The second issue, the paint colour, follows a similar pattern. I’ve never been fond of cars wearing metallic paint, but this one has grown on me. There’s something about it that just looks right on this car and the name of the colour really struck me as quite cool: Bronzit-beige. I do like me a bit of German talk. Then there was the price. Almost too good to be true. Being very much a ‘you get what you pay for’ kinda guy, I spent about an hour crawling all over this thing at the used car lot and took it for a decent test drive. After being told several times that the car was ‘perfect’ I wrote the sales guy a list of stuff that needed fixing and pointed out that our concepts of perfect differed somewhat. There wasn’t anything major, but who doesn’t like making a used car salesman squirm? He said he’d look into it and get back to me. Less than a week later I was driving away in my new E30 having paid about two thirds of what I thought a car like this would fetch. Project Bronzit was off to a great start. |
