-Hi and welcome to XCAR's review of the year 2013.
I'm joined with Nick Wilkinson and Alex Goy and I'm Drew Stern and we are going to be going through month by month everything that we've done here on XCAR, and of course with these things it seems logical to start in January.
-Right.
Big lesson for January.
We revealed the ToyARTa to Drew, our long lost long-term car.
Loved that thing.
We drove the Focus
ST and the BMW M5 in Wales.
That was cold.
We went out with Shmee150 in his bright purple Audi R8 Spyder.
We drove the Lotus Exige S. We had interview with Charles Morgan.
-Right.
Well, for people who don't know what the ToyARTa was.
-It was a Toyota Hilux that had been converted by its previous keeper to be a proper offroad mental machine.
You could put a tent on the roof, had spare tires.
It was jacked up.
It had of course had light bar and it was amazing, but we had it wrapped with loads of XCAR livery and
XCAR, well, art really by Ian Cook, friend of the show.
He goes on the pop bang color and it looks absolutely amazing, but that was done before we left for Christmas.
In January we showed it to you.
I went rousing round town.
Next one is the Ford Focus ST and the BMW M5.
-We chose a weekend in Wales where it was kind of the blizzards kind of began of January, and I remember overnight everything froze and we couldn't even get into the Hilux next morning because the back doors had frozen.
So we actually had to kind
of do some jiggery pokery with some screwdrivers to kind of get into our kit.
-I want you to describe Wales to people who don't know where that is.
Of course we're not referring to our British viewers.
We obviously assume you know where Wales is, but we have a lot of viewers from overseas who might not be as familiar.
-Yes.
Went up the M4 so you go there for a couple of hours and then you probably wanna head over the Severn Bridge.
It's a lump in the middle left of England.
-Yes.
-So if you look--
-It's that weird thing.
-Just like a backpack.
-Yes.
-Yes.
-It's the growth of England.
-Yes.
-But we love Wales and we shoot there a lot and it's absolutely beautiful.
The Brecon Beacons, it's absolutely stunning but at that point in my infinite wisdom I decided despite the heavy snowfall and Alex driving quite a rare M5 that we would go up.
It's kind of the top of a mountain to get a time lapse at dawn and I remember within about 11 minutes my camera battery was just absolutely dead because it was about minus 11 degrees.
-I remember driving up the hill leading the convoy, Hilux in the back, so I went to turn in and then the back just went nip, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no and I had a nice big drift
that very nearly turned the interior of the car an interesting shade of brown.
Anyway, moving swiftly on we met up with a lovely man called Shmee150.
-And who's Shmee150.
-Shmee150 is one of the world's premier car spotters.
His job is to go out and spot cars and have goes in the kind of stuff that we dream of.
But he has his very own Audi R8 V10 Spyder pre-facelift but he had it wrapped purple.
So we thought it'd be nice.
-Beautiful color.
-Yes.
-Yes.
-We thought it'd be nice to
go out and well, ask him some questions about it.
-Yes, it was all right.
I mean that V10 sound.
I mean we've had the V8 previously.
I think it's our first V10 that we filmed actually.
-Yes.
That's right.
Yes.
-And the sound was just unbelievable especially in the convertible.
-Yes.
We had the Spyder.
If I recall he had a Quicksilver exhaust put on it and there was a special point if you rev up to it made the exhaust crap, so you put your put down, it goes like that which is amazing.
-It's like a backfire sounds like a
gunshot.
This sounded like a minigun.
It was just absolutely superb.
I had to put the camera about 10 meters further back.
Now I usually do to not peak the sound because it was mad.
-The Lotus Exige S, one of my favoritest cars we've driven this year because it was green.
It looked angry and good God it was quick.
-I think one of the best films we've done.
I think in terms of the track stuff it just looks like such an angry car and then to see it in its environment it was like a really wet day but not too wet that it was
kind of impossible to film and seeing that car kind of go sideways in that V6 sound.
It wails and wails.
It's an extremely angry banshee.
-Well, it's like you'd expect an Elise to evolve into properly.
-If it was on roids though it was like pumping in the gym.
-Like Pokemon.
-Yes.
You get it to the right level and then all of a sudden it evolves and it has a bigger wing and a massive engine like twice the size the one it has already.
Yes.
I want one of those.
I'm a little bit in love with it.
We usually look for kind of a nice
country area kind of something quite rural but we saw this industrial state and it was kind of ripped Union Jack and this abandoned garages and it just looks so kind of roar and it kind of completely matched the Exige S' kind of I'm gonna bite your hand off.
Look about you.
You would've wanted to hang about in the area, although we did with some very expensive camera equipment for a few hours.
-At the end of January we went to interview a very, very lovely chap called Charles Morgan.
He used to be the MD of the Morgan Motor Company.
Then he was lambasted from the Morgan Motor Company and now he's been sacked, but it doesn't stop him
from being the best uncle ever.
-We all had-- I mean there was 3 of us there.
It was me, you, and Kyle.
-Yes.
-Whose work experienced at that time.
We all had a bit of a man crushing him by the end of the day because he was just--
-Not a bit of a man crushing--
-No.
Okay.
I was trying to play it down but way to be cool.
He was just immaculately dressed.
He was just so friendly, so welcoming, and we thought you know, we'd have very little time with him, but actually he took his time with us.
The interview us-- we got so much great stuff.
It was so kind of difficult to cut it down and then we-- I mean he kind of spent the day with us.
He really wanted to see how the process worked and he really
appreciate what we did and then I got one of the best filming experiences ever.
I got to go out in his Aeromax.
It was still incredibly snowy around Morven and quite icy and he took it off-road onto kind of this path that was kind of for farm, it was a mud path that was for farm land kind of track is that kind of thing, really icy and then his hands-- I mean he's been racing Morgan since he was just incredibly young, but you've just thought of going like this and he is a phenomenal driver.
But the fact that he would take you is kind of going past part cars about that far away and he's just well a legend.
I mean that's what you can say really.
It was a privilege to spend some time with him.
-Yes.
Morgan will be a worse company without him I think.
-It is a real shame not only as a personality himself, but he seemed to have the right forward thinking to bring the right people onboard at the right time.
-It was Charles that started the Aero program and he started that through racing.
-So highlight for January.
-I think all of them are pretty good.
I think meeting Charles Morgan I think that's gotta be--
-It's gotta be hands down.
I mean there was no other thing I was thinking there.
Meeting Charles Morgan, spending a day with him, and the Aeromax which I think is just absolutely
stunning.
-The links to Charles Morgan and all the other films from January will be below and we'll see you again tomorrow for highlights from February.
