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Top Gear Australia Series 2 – Sanna got on screen, again!

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A month ago we went along to the filming of the 2nd series of Top Gear Australia as the 1st series was a laugh to go to. It turned out to be the final episode of the series so there were some reasonably good stuff featured in the episode. This time the group was Sanna and I and friend Cameron from work.

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There’s Sanna on the left right at the front the sneaky bugger

Cameron is blessed with height so he was on screen for most of the audience shots with his head poking out of the crowd for most of the episode. During the star in a reasonably priced car interview piece, the director asked Sanna to come to the front as they were setting up shot and someone said ‘it’s always the pretty ones’ 🙂 I was sent to the back being too short and too ugly for national TV and went to the back of the studio to watch the live camera feeds on the directors monitor.

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Camerons head poking out and smiling
all the time from 3 rows back

Gyton Grantley from the Aussie hit drama series underbelly was the star in the reasonability priced car and he came out at the very top of the celebrity lap times board. Queue Sanna’s spontaneous look of amazement just as Warren the presenter announced the lap time 🙂 I was at the back of the studio have having a good giggle watching her on the monitor.

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Queue! spontaneous look of amazement

And here is the YouTube clip!

Lotus

Little Loti update

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Have covered 600+ km’s and 1 track day at Oran Park Raceway so far after the supercharger install and I’m still very impressed with the VF Stage 1 kit.

On the straights at track days, pre-supercharger I would be level with the likes of BMW M3’s, and modified EVO’s would pull away slowly, now it is just pulling hard right past everything on the track right up to 210kph in 5th, where I eased off at the end of Oran Park’s straight. Sanna now says ‘Little Loti has big balls’

I look forwards to getting to a track day soon where there are some exotic supercars, if I can stay level with them on the straight I’ll be more than happy as I’ll get them on the twisty bits 🙂

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Friend Brenden from the Lotus club has also fitted a fire doodah for an extra insurance policy using one of his great brackets (highly recommended if you don’t want to drill into your metal floor).

Looks just like it could have been a factory fitted option, just what I was looking for, thanks heaps Brenden.

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Lotus

On the road with the Elise videos

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Over the past few months I have been slowly taking footage for a video I have always had in mind to finish off. It completes the 3 part video of a detailed look at the Lotus Elise R, and now it has all the parts I really wanted to put into it.

All the footage was filmed on the excellent (but bumpy at times) roads of the Sydney Royal national and Lane Cove national parks. Flatmate Damien and good friend at work and fellow petrolhead Cameron were my camera team.

The in-car footage was recorded using the sticky pod Professional camera mount system stuck to the lower left hand side of the windscreen. My Sony HD HDD video camera was attached to the sticky pod. Video editing again as done with my good friend Adobe Premiere Pro, although a real bitch to start to learn, its very powerful and loaded with professional level features.

I’m certainly no professional on camera but I think it went well for a bit of a laugh, and it was good fun with friends making it. Enough with the babble, watch the videos! 🙂

Lotus

Supercharging the Little Elise

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aka 07 Elise R go Supercharged project – VF kit Stage 1

aka The Elise Lotus ‘should’ be making

Well I kept it a bit quiet but the supercharger upgrade to the Elise R is fitted , tested and complete. The results so far on the road, well I’m totally chuffed and a very happy man and I now have a Lotus induced headache from the excitement of driving it 🙂

Picture 292 (Medium)The cars just ticking over 12,000km’s now so it is still feeling fresh and new but like all owners, I yearned for a bit more power & torque from my little Elise.

Time for some forced induction!

The back story….. After looking around for nearly a year researching all the Elise supercharger kits available, Katana, BRW, SSC’s OEM based kits and becoming very very close to trading up to the Exige CUP 260, I finally drew down to the VF (that’s VisionFunction) kit jointly developed in AU and the US.

Vision function currently produce Stage 1, 2 and in the works stage 3 kits for the Lotus Elise R, Exige customers wanting a bit more power than is on offer from Lotus but I went with the Stage 1 kit which provides more than enough power and torque levels (see below).

After the order was in with Turbo XS team in Hornsby (the licensed kit supplier and installer for VisionFunction in AU) they promised the kit would take 2 weeks to fit.

This time was mostly down to the ECU having to be posted to the US for the legendary (well on the international internet forums level) Charlie X, to work his code onto the unit and post back to AU. The actual physical parts of the kit only takes the guys a few days to fit and its all rear body clam on work.

I should say what is in the kit, well all the details and technical data can be found here www.visionfunction.com but the kit contains:

  • Eaton MP62 Supercharger (same as used in all supercharged Lotus Exige’s, not in the Elise SC)
  • Custom Intake Manifold
  • Intercooler (tests show 50% lower intake charge temperature, very important)
  • New fuel Injectors (440cc)
  • Charlie X Custom ECU Reflash

The kit cost all up $13,000 which included all labour, posting of ECU to the US and back, and 2 years parts and labour warranty. The guys at TurboXS kept to their word and the car was ready in a little under the 2 weeks they said. So far Stage 2 kits have been fitted to 2 cars in Melbourne but I am the first customer to have a Stage 1 kit fitted in AU. The kit produces a fairly hefty increase in power, here are the figures:

At the crank = 219.98Kw (295hp)
At the wheels = 183.82Kw (246.5hp)

The day before I picked up the car the guys took the car to be Dyno tested to do a before and after comparison, here’s the results and a video they made:

Dynograph before & after supercharger

On the graph above, Red is the old power and
torque outputs, Blue shows the new. 

I picked up the car today and so far have driven it for just less than 100km’s around the city to run it in a bit. First impressions are the car goes as hard as the Exige CUP 260 did when I tested it 2 weeks ago, I’m serious. 1st and 2nd gears are just over in seconds and are really quite scary. Car weighs in at 885kg with no driver so 0-100kph should be a clean 4 seconds if you know how to launch it correctly. Pushing hard over slightly broken tarmac, the traction control light blinked a tiny amount as you feel the rear tyres fighting for grip to put the power down.

Last weekend a few of you know I was lucky to have a Porsche GT3 for the weekend. The Elise now feels like it pulls the same if not actually ‘quicker’ to 100kph now and over that nearly as hard as the GT3 does. I feel the chassis would start to not cope so well if more power was put under the hood, I dunno.

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Before and after comparison shots, the installation is neat & tidy

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New air intake system 

The guys were very helpful to make up some supercharged badges that I supplied in JPG format to them, this was an unplanned item for them and they happily obliged, finishes off the car visually quite nicely:

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Supercharged Logos I put together in Photoshop
and they applied to the car

Oh and I have not mentioned the sound! The mashing of the superchargers gears as it chomps up the air makes the most incredible and crazy sound! Pushing the accelerator to the floor there were pedestrians hearing it coming and thinking ‘what the hell’s that sound’. It sounds a lot like when a Jet plane is on the runway throttling up its engines, just crazy. It is FAR louder than the MP62 sounds in any of the standard Lotus supercharged Exige cars, it must be the free’er flowing air intake system I would think.

I am looking forwards to getting the thing out of the city and letting it stretch its legs to really see what nearly 300hp and under 900kg’s of weight feels like 🙂

As the VisionFunction.com website says:

Head turning looks, CHECK!
Phenomenal lateral grip, CHECK!
Eye ball yanking braking, CHECK!
0-60 acceleration of a Porsche 911 Turbo, CHECK!

Sanna says after a drive ‘yeah it goes really fast!’, Damien says ‘It sounds Good!’

I will check back in once I’ve got a few more Km’s under its wheels 🙂

cheers

Lotus, Porsche

Lotus CUP 260 and Porsche GT3 drives

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Well the drive of the Lotus Exige CUP 260 managed to come through and yep I was the only person allowed to drive it before it went to Targa Tasmania to compete, and bloody amazing it was to drive too. A pure race car for the road it felt, totally un-driveable for the road, totally un-practical, totally FUN!

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Queue cheesy smile for the camera!

My full article write-up of the drive is live on TheMotorReport.com.au site right now right here: 2009 Lotus Exige Cup 260 First Test Drive

 Dean Evans & Simone Bachman – 2009 Lotus Exige Cup 260

The Cup 260 competing on Day 1 of the Targa Tasmania 2009

Jump 2 weekends on and I had booked a weekend (Friday night to Monday morning) with my dream car the Porsche GT3. This one was provided by the supercar club and it came in White with only a couple of small options thrown at it, perfect. I think the Porsche GT3 looks best in White, it looked great, if I was ever to buy one it would surely be in White, I was in love. For years now my dream car has been the Porsche GT3 & its rarer GT3 RS cousin. The proof, I have a large framed photo of a Orange GT3 RS on the Nurburgring ring on my hallways wall 🙂

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But back to driving the Porsche GT3……. By far the best highlights of the car were its rock solid suspension feeling, totally direct steering feel and above all an engine you couldn’t fault and made me smile inside with every push of the accelerator.

With its 415HP the power from 4500rpm surged massively and was more than enough for the road. As you pressed your foot to the carpet, the rear would squat down and push into the road as it accelerated hard.

The sound from the flat 6 cylinder 3.6 litre race bred Porsche motorsport derived engine sounded like it was truly from the race track. It sounded just like what you hear when watching the Porsche Carrera cup races on TV. For the good reason too that it’s the same engine used in those cars, just in this road car form its carrying a bit more lard up front. Still 0-100kph in around 4.5 seconds cant be snuffed at.

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I did find it a tad loud from the exhaust on the motorway sections of which I did a few 100km’s in the end. After returning the car the supercar club representative Mark, said it sounded like the exhaust baffles were jammed wide open, giving it full volume all the way. Still I agreed with him, I would of rather them jammed open than jammed shut 🙂

So GT3 or Audi R8, both the same pricing here in Australia? After driving them both just 1 month apart and both for more than 500km’s I would say the R8 just pips it to the post slightly, and I mean just slightly. The R8 has the advantages of the all-wheel drive grip on the road, much more advanced magnetic adjusting suspension and a V8 that delivers around the same power but crucially all through the rev-range.

I’d still take the GT3 in White though 🙂 Second hand one’s are now coming on the market for $190k, give it 12 more months and it could be attainable to the likes of Mr. average Joe blogs armed with a bit of finance like me 🙂

Aston Martin, Lotus

Driving like Bond & other ramblings

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Took the Aston Martin DB9 out at the weekend, covered 500km’s over 2 days in the end. The DB9 being the current Aston Martin range topper was a good car to be enlightened to the whole Aston Martin experience for the first time. Great long distance tourer, a sports car it is not. There were a couple of times I pushed it a bit too hard and it became unsettled (loosing traction), the stability control kicking in and fixing things up quickly and effortlessly. Speeds and corners I could push the Elise or Audi R8 through hard, the DB9 got upset with me.


Aston_Martin-DB9.jpgStill as a GT it was amazing, it reminded me a lot of my dad’s BMW 535 with its effortless torque and its relaxing ride, the DB9 has 80% of its torque from just 1500rpm, beautiful to drive with.

I managed to kerb it doing a reverse park during a photo shoot at Olympic park yesterday and made a 6cm rim scratch. Before the club called I phoned around for 3 quotes to fix it to prepare myself for the shock and they were all around $250-$300 to fix it, amazing. The club called mid-morning and they said they noticed a large scratch on the alloy which was fresh. They said no worries, just put it down as wear and tear basically, I thought that was a pretty good call of them.

Lotus-Esprit-350-Sport.jpgYesterday during the photo shoot a friend arrived with a lovely example Lotus Esprit Sport 350 he bought last week. Only 5000km’s on the clock, only 45 made worldwide and only 1 in Australia. The Sport 350 was the 2nd to last rare edition Lotus made specials before shutting down the Esprit production line. A few cyclists in their 40’s turned up and it was obvious to them this was a childhood poster dream of theirs as they were growing up; they were besotted by the car.2009-lotus-exige-cup-260.jpg

Later this week I’ll be lucky enough to get a road test of the Lotus Exige CUP 260 before it gets transported down to Tasmania for Dean Evan’s to race in the famous event. I think Lotus are super keen to get me into it to give me and Sanna a drive before it goes to Taz to act as a Lotus PR machine.

 

That’s my ramblings off my mind for now…

Holidays

The Great Ocean Road video with the Audi R8

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Here’s a short 3 minute video I put together of Sanna and I experiencing Audi’s first entry into the world of the supercar, the Audi R8 4.2 FSI. It turned into 4 days of driving some of the best country costal twisty roads I have found yet, and the R8 proved to be the perfect tool for carving the roads up.

Great car, great engine, a heap of fun to drive and with a smidgen over 400hp, really as much power as you would ever need to have some serious fun.

I edited the video together again using Adobe Premiere Pro, after many hours of exploring around the interface I’m getting much better on the app now . Its an excellent video editing tool, very clever in what it can do, looking at the manuals for it, I’ve only just scratched the surface of its features.

Alfa Romeo, Audi, Ford, Lamborghini

3 more car reviews experienced

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Well I’ve been busy the last couple of months on the weekends reviewing more cars for the TheMotorReport.com.au website as a part-time job/ bit of a hobby. I was lucky to experience 2 more supercars over a few days and also we published my review of the Alfa Romeo Brera from last summer.

Click on each image below to open the full review and a gallery of the cars.

TMRLamboLP560review

 TMRFordGTreview

TMRBrerareview

Also on the same subject, Sanna and I just came back from a trip to Melbourne and the great ocean road where I bundled in 4 days with the very much talked about and truly amazing Audi R8.

The full review and the photo shoot results are being worked on now but they will soon be published to TheMotorReport.com.au website in the next few weeks and I’ll provide a link to it from here I’m sure.

For now, take care all x x

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Cars, Lotus

A suicide ride

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I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to be in the right place at the right time with the right equipment last week.

One of the Lotus club members and a local friend had just rolled his new highly anticipated project, the fully carbon fibre bodied, Audi S3 engined, highly modified S1 Elise/Exige out onto the street for the first time, literally scraping its mm’s high carbon body work on the pavement in the process.

I edited this short video together over a couple of evenings to try and share the frightening experience.The video is in HD 720p (currently YouTube’s highest) make sure you click the little ‘watch in HD’ link on the lower right of the clip when it opens.

Click the video below to play.

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The whole engine bay fizzled and popped as if it was going to explode, a sign of its very high tune. It as the first time I was glad to climb out of a car.

Holidays

Back to England for Christmas & long stopover in Dubai

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For this Christmas Sanna and I returned to home (well old home for me) to England to have a more traditional Christmas with the family. Although Australia is the place I want to live for now, for a couple weeks of the year I miss good old England for all the traditional parts I miss from home. Cold ‘Christmassy’ weather, Christmas dinner with the family and having hot Christmas mulled wine down the pub catching up with friends.

England

We arrived in England on the 23rd of December to a cold 5 degree’s and bit of a shock to the body from the 30 degree’s we had when we left summertime in Australia just the day before.

Here is Sanna sitting in dad’s new car his Morgan V6 Roadster in lovely British Racing Green, it turned out lovely although I’m not sure it’s Sanna’s style but she looks comfy.

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It’s very cold in England in the winter so if your driving in an open topped sports car you need a good hat, I’m not sure this one suited me so much though.

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Everyone helping to set the table for Christmas day dinner. Dad has a tablecloth for every occasion! he told us.

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After Christmas day we visited London for 2 days to see the sights and visit Sanna’s old Southampton University friend Cor and my old best mate Dom who’s now living in London.

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This picture must of have been taken 1000’s of times, its the stereotypical view of the old London guard for the Queen. I told Cor it takes them years to grow their hair like that.

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Sanna in front of the old London bridge during a walk along the river Thames.

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We met up with my old best mate Dom to catch up on how he’s been doing.

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Trip to Wales

Time for some adventure and even colder temperatures. We visited the Snowdonia region in North Wales and visited the old town of Betws-y–Coed which we have visited many times before. Here we are in Betws-y–Coed on the old bridge braving the cold.

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Sanna and I did a day trip climbing mount Snowdon which is just over 1000 metres tall. This was my third time climbing mount Snowdon but the first time for Sanna. I love climbing it and this time I chose a much harder steeper track for a bit more fun. Here’s the warning sign at the bottom saying there are no supplies or shelter from this point onwards.

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Near the top there was snow laying in places cold enough to resist the little warmth the sun provides near the summit.

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In the same day after getting back from our mount Snowdon climb we went to old Trafford to watch Manchester United play. Here is Dad in his element.

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Stopover in Dubai

After 2 weeks in England we jumped on the plane to Dubai for a 6 day extended stopover. It was the middle of the winter there but it was a warm 25 degree’s in the day and around 17-18 degree’s at night. Here is Sanna greeting one of the locals.

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The famous Dubai indoor ski slope containing real snow and was really large inside. The whole building is in the middle of the desert and is kept freezing cold all year round.

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When in Dubai we met up with an old friend of Sanna’s family Abdullah who is pretty much a Dubai local living there for many years and who showed us around the sights of his amazing city in the desert.

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Inside one of the lavish Dubai 5 star hotels. This was the newly opened Atlantis hotel which is built on the tip of the palm which is built on sand reclaimed from the sea.

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The inside of the Atlantis hotel was built around the ‘Lost city of Atlantis under the sea’ theme showing some 85,000 different species of fish in its windows.

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Once again inside Atlantis, I was quite happy with how this photo came out, the lighting and reflections came out great with the menacing silhouette figure in the background.

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A warm Arabic night in front of the Burj Al Arab in the distance, the worlds most expensive hotel and gaining a world first, 7 stars.

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Inside the 7 star Burj Al Arab hotel, many walls and pillars were gold plated and the common areas featuring very clever water fountains that played music with the sound of the water colliding all computer controlled.

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We had a buffet lunch at the Burj Al Arab as part of our tour, god knows how much it would of cost but the food was top quality the best we’ve had. We bought a 1 litre bottle of still water and it cost $20 or around £10.

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Lastly after 6 days in Dubai and a few days of horrible food poisoning for me, we flew back to Sydney. It was nice to be home and the weather on our return was a lovely 30 degree’s again.