Fast Car – September 2019

defi ning car culture 079

FAST PROJECTS

The coilovers cost more

than the car. Fact

Not much remains of the

well specc’d Sirion

Old v New

#bosh

MIDGE’S DAIHATSU SIRION

So the Doningtonweekender challenges are
all about handling. Bugger!
Now obviously my fi rst thought was ‘I guess
I’ll be needing the doors on it for this one then,’
closely followed by the realisation: ‘handling?
This Daihatsu corners like a chuffi ng cruise ship!’
Still, it wasn’t all bad news. As like before, our
sponsors had come up trumps by supplying
some key essentials, namely a set of spanking
new BC coilovers for each car.
I assumed these had to be one-off items
just for this particular Daihatsu, but apparently
not. Don’t ask me why, but these are actually
a part that BC Racing already make! As if we
needed any more proof that these guys have
the craziest fi tment list in the business.
Anyway, there was still one major priority
to sort out with the Sirion before all that. Ever

MIDGE’S

So the Donington
all about handling. Bugger!
Now obviously my fi rst thought was ‘I guess
I’ll be needing the doors on it for this one then,’

since the car got its botty spanked at Japfest,

the clutch has been slipping like a good ‘un.

To be fair, it wasn’t all that healthy to start with

and would clearly need replacing sharpish. If

anything, just to be able to drive it to the show.

So, while I left Jules and his Alto coilovers

with the run of my workshop (which is rather

kind of me, I think you’ll agree), I popped down

the road to see my pal Rob at ER Diagnostics.

Rob had the clutch sorted in no time with a

minimum of swearing, leaving me to get back

and crack on with the mods.

Now, as before, lightness will be the key to

my master plan, so I quickly decided to strip out

anything else considered unnecessary before

I fi tted the coilovers. The rest of the dash and

the doorcards soon found themselves in the bin

and then I had a rare moment of genius. Glass is

SPENT THIS MONTH

BC Racing coilovers .......................................£692

Clutch ..................................................................£330

Windows .............................................................£220

Build Budget Remaining ............................ £1,973

heavy, right? So why not swap out the windows

for some Lexan items? I’ve done this on a few

cars before and my go-to guys have always

been ACW Motorsport Plastics. I gave them

a bell and, after discovering there’s nothing

available for the Sirion off the shelf (no surprises

there), they suggested making up some window

templates and sending them over. So, that’s

exactly what I did, and hopefully they’ll be able

to make them up in time for the show. Which,

to be honest, they always do!

SEE THE VIDEOS HERE!

HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/CHANNEL

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