-Hi, and welcome to XCAR's round-up of the year.
Today, we're talking about April.
April was an exceptionally busy month, and we covered not only the Jaguar F-Type, but we looked at the UK Tuning Scene, the Toyota Supra, and you had a look at Radical.
-Jag.
-Jag.
Jaguar F-Type, the car that I've wanted to drive since forever-- since I found out it was a concept,
and I was like, "Oh, that's gonna be a really good car." And then, they called it F-Type, and then, we're [unk] and launched.
-Jaguar Land Rover do great launches and they tailor a lot of stuff for video.
And they had very switched on to what the kind of needs off a video, which is someone who kind of produces it is just-- is so refreshing--
-Uh-huh.
-compared to other things where you have three hours to get something you need-- six hours full.
We had all the time in the world, and we had a great support crew with us there to help us out, to get what we wanted.
And I mean, just to see you experience
every F-Type there was, the V6, the V6S, the V8, it was one of the best experience I've had in a car.
We were driving along in V6, couple of people caught up behind us, we managed to catch up with another full F-type.
So, there's seven of us all in a row.
And these V6s just harmonizing perfectly, beautiful weather, no wind, sun beating down in your roof down, just amazing.
And then, four of them just took off.
And oh, it was-- it was brilliant.
-I like the sound.
-It was so good.
-Uh-huh.
-Indescribable.
-Anyway, we can't set much [unk] over for that, the F-Type all day.
Otherwise, one of us end up sticky and it probably wouldn't be good.
-Links to our F-Type video are below, if you wanna skip to that right now.
Otherwise, we'll carry on with what we did in April.
-Uh-huh.
-And we have the look at the British Tuning Scene.
And we went up and down the country looking at some of the top car tuners in the country to see what they could do to cars, and then got them all together at Bruntingthorpe.
-It was really fascinating, actually, because I mean, I-- for a lot, I went on my own, sometimes, I work with you.
But we looked at kind of the different kind of tuners and what
people do.
And there's a lot of different things out there in the tuning scene.
We went to REVO Technik and STaSIS, and they were looking at kind of tuning cars with software a lot of the time.
And I just-- I couldn't believe what you can do to a car this year-- I mean, especially--
-It's insane.
-a standard VW group engine, the kind of limits you can push it to, but still be within the kind of safe margin.
It was just unbelievable.
You can increase power by about, what-- 30 percent without even blinking an eye.
Just by plugging in a computer, which to me just feels like--
-And it takes--
-absolute magic.
-takes ten seconds.
-Yeah.
-It's unbelievable.
You need to think that this used to require a mechanic and special know-how, and now, it's-- all that's in a little box.
Done.
-Un-- Incredible.
Then, we went up to Revolution, a new car.
So, they tuned the Subaru Impreza to a point where they broke the lap record at the Nurburgring and became the fastest Subaru Impreza ever to go around the Nurburgring, beating Tommi Makinen, the Rally legend's previous best time-- which is very cool because it was about a week before they went down and we got to film it and hear their journey.
And when they
got back, Glen called me up and said, "Yeah, we did it." Which was just fantastic to kind of be on board for that journey.
And then, we had Quicksilver.
We were kind of more in the exhaust kind of side of things.
-But also, they had the 911 GT2 Porsche Lynn.
-Oh, the Porsche Lynn was just beautiful.
The design and the wrap.
It was just-- it was perfect 'cause you looked up really close and you saw that kind of cracked--
-Uh-huh.
-porcelain effect.
-It was like a Ming [unk]--
-Yeah.
-that could do 220 miles an hour.
-It was mad, that GT2.
It flew, it absolutely flew.
And not only did it fly,
it sang, as well.
-Uh-huh.
-I mean, the Quicksilver exhaust.
I mean, we'd experience that on Schmitz--
-Yeah.
-RAV10.
But wow.
Just to hear a-- there were bunch of them with Quicksilver exhaust on them.
They do very good things.
And not only for supercars.
I mean, we talked to him, and you know, you'll get someone with a, you know, a Diesel go full go in there to kind of make that car sound more interesting.
And they can do it.
They will make your car sound better.
And that was really cool to see all the different things that people do on the tuning scene, and then see them all together just kind of destroying Bruntingthorpe's airstrip.
-Toyota
Supra is a car that many people-- absolutely do.
It's a cover car for Gran Turismo.
People, they see a Supra and they expect it to be mental.
It was-- it was made famous by not only Gran Turismo, but also Fast and Furious and all that kind of thing that--
-It's a much lamented passing.
-Yes.
It really, really is.
And we were offered to drive Toyota's very own, which happens to have Castrol Livery and a ridiculous felt side body kit on it.
The story was that it was the last
Supra ever to be imported in the UK, and it was top [unk] company car, which is why it has an automatic gearbox.
And if I find that particular exact, I want words because no, that was silly.
Anyway, Toyota had the car, and then, they put it on their press flee, and then people weren't doing much with it, so Redline Magazine said, "well, if you have a Supra, we can shoot it and make it awesome." So, they did that.
Then, they got in touch with actual tons, who sent in the proper livery off of the Castrol-racing Supra, and then it
became this awesome thing.
-High speeds in the Supra felt faster than any other car I've been in.
Even 70 miles an hour, you're so low to the ground, even on just kind of like a motorway, you'd be like-- you feel like a racing driver.
It's just such cool car.
-Moving on, Nick, you got to drive or drive in a Radical.
-That was great fun.
We went down to-- we went up to, rather-- Radical's headquarters in Peterborough.
And just to see the way they do things is just- it's pretty exciting because there's not many
manufacturers that kind of can make everything in-house.
-Uh-huh.
-But they pretty much can.
I mean, they're-- they do have excellent suppliers, but-- I mean, even the V8 engine for the Radical-- which hasn't come out yet-- they've got the V6, which is the Ford engine for the Mustang.
But the V8 engine, they're designing in-house, they've milled all the parts in-house.
They can essentially make an engine and a chassis and just all the parts of the car-- which is incredibly rare for a manufacturer.
And they-- they're--
-For a small manufacturer in Britain, it's very rare.
-Yeah.
Exactly.
It's just-- it's very
impressive.
And everything I saw there just impressed me so much.
And their cars are just mad.
They're-- I mean, they're built for he track.
-Yeah.
-Originally.
This was the first kind of car that they designed for the road.
And it's equally mad as all their track cars, even more so, really.
You see the way it looks.
People may argue about its looks.
I don't think it's necessarily the prettiest car in the world.
-I'm gonna agree with everyone out.
-Yeah.
It's--
-Do you think it's not--
-It's not the most prettiest car in the world.
And when you see it in person, you don't think it's only prettier.
-Does it have a lovely personality?
No.
But it's mad.
-It only needs an attractive back because that's what anyone's ever gonna see of it.
-We'll draw a line on the April.
We've got links to that film, the Radical film and every one we've discussed for this month below.
And join us again tomorrow where we'll be doing a round-up of May.
