29th Nov 2007, 11:41

People with these cars make me laugh, I mean, I own one, but it won't do 60mph in 4 seconds, 145mph flat out and sound like a 2.0, all from a small 8v engine. Why not do it properly and leave the body as it is, because its brilliant! Then you just need to know what you're doing with a nice little 1600 8v under the bonnet ;) Makes for a worrying match for an XE Nova any day.

29th Nov 2007, 12:11

Your right, I had a nova 1.6 8v (GSI) with a turbo conversion, around 160 bhp without being too heavy up front. It did make it extremely prone to wheel spin though. Boy did it go!

30th Nov 2007, 03:57

What you are saying then is that to turn a humble Nova into an all conquering missile, you need a drill and a K&N filter. You are seriously suggesting that you have found something that all the Engineering graduates and Tefal heads in GM's R&D department just missed. That your ingenuity and £20 worth of tools can overcome a limitation that a multi billion dollar corporation employing engineering genius could not?

No wonder the "tuning industry" makes so much money when this is what they are targeting. I'll have a bit of that business if that's how easy the money is, thank you very much.

30th Nov 2007, 04:54

Where in that statement you re-quoted did he talk about tuning? It was to make the engine sound different. And I'm sure there are lots of things that GM and all manufacturers could do to make the car sound better or faster, but then the target customers would be narrowed. But there is a tuning industry so the minority that want to tune their car can, nothing wrong with it, and a lot of items are effective if you know what you are doing.

14th Dec 2007, 08:59

Nothing wrong with tuning. Attacking an airbox with a drill ain't tuning though.

Ported and polished heads, big valves, more aggressive cam profiles, matched exhaust, induction mods, fuelling mods. that's tuning. You can't just bolt catalogue crap on or attack it with a drill. It takes skill and experience.