2005 Volkswagen Lupo 1.4 S Audi TT 225 Engine conve review from UK and Ireland

Seems to go through brake pads fairly quickly, but this is due to being a much higher tuned car than normal.

Suffered a small radiator leak when quite new due to a loose hose, fixed under warranty.

Other than that nothing else has gone wrong, even since the conversion!.

Well When I first got the car it was a brand new 1.4 8v 's' so there was never really any major problems with it at all and lived up to VW'S reputation very well.

Returning excellent mpg, and reasonably nippy around town. I did however find the engine little a little coarse and unrefined at times, especially when pushed hard. the brakes where adequate and were quite efficient in there ability to bring the car to a halt quickly if required, but would fade and overheat if the car was pushed hard, however this is no falt of the car's as it is an economy car.

With me being 19 and owning the car outright rather than finance it was very cheap to run with cheap insurance.

When I turned 20 in 2006 I felt with the money I had saved and earned over the past few years to see what options where available to upgrade the car as I was a little bored of it as standard.

So I started looking around as I thought that a powerful engine in a little car would be very quick and handle well just like Lotus' vision for the elise and others.

I found a few that had been converted in Germany mainly and also some in Spain where I think the car is built. They ranged from simple 'gti' conversions upto 'shoe-horned in' vr6 conversions.

I felt a vr6 would be too heavy on the front end so settled for the turbo unit from an audi tt and went the whole hog and bought a '225' unit out of a crashed one with only 7k miles.

Then it was time to have the car prepped so it would be off the road for a little while so bought a run about.

Then had to have the chassis prepared so sent it off to a good bodywork friend of mine who does work in the insurance business who did all the seam welding and also welded in a detachable roll-cage so the chassis was rigid as possible and could take the extra strain of power. Also while the car was there it was treated to respray in Ferrari Red to make the whole car stand out a bit better as it was a rather dull. Also had a full bodykit with specially designed spoiler front and rear to improve downforce at speed.

Next it was off to a specialist racing team down the road who did the suspension, brakes and wheels with a big brake conversion from the golf r32 mk4 with drilled discs to give ultimate and impressive stopping power, they then set the new coil-over set-up for fast road use so it was safe for wet conditions as well as some track day work.

Next I had the engine installed and tweaked with Air filter, exhaust and a chip to bring power upto arounds 260bhp, and a specially modified Quattro platform from the tt coupled to a semi-automatic Quaife rally gearbox. which was very expensive to have done, but highly worth it.

Then the interior was fitted back in with the exception of a few 'heavy' items such as the standard seating in favour of lighter Cobra bucket items. Basically a rally car spec interior to make the car as light as possible.

The car was then finally dyno'd and set up properly before being 'tested' took it very slow at first as was very very powerful!, and had a lot of urgency too it.

After a few hundred miles of 'testing' were done it was time to take this baby to the track for a full road test, first impressions where very very scary! extremly fast and capable with impressive stopping power and hard race tuned type suspension it cornered flat and hard with oversteer if provoked, but very controllable on the whole.

The power however was something else, because the car is so light there is no 'lag' to speak of really and the car was run against a Porsche 911 turbo '996' were the driver was struggling quite bad to overtake, but did win in the end on the straight!, on the corners though the fearsome power and excellent handling set-up proved wonders and showed that the best can be beaten!.

An excellent car in this state of tune, however wouldnot recommend for everyday use as it is just too brutal and uneconomical, but what did you expect?.

I will add more info when I get chance, but have been sat here 30 minutes or so now, so will leave it at that.