sawood12
New member
Watched a re-run of TG this afternoon. It was the one that compared a load of hot hatches (current Golf GTi, Leon Cupra, previous Civic Type R, Megane 225). The Golf got a time of 1m33s in the hands of the Stig round their track.
Also in that particular episode was the 'Buy a Porsche for £1500' thing. If you remember this culminated in the three cars setting a time round the track at the hands of the Stig.
Bearing in mind James May's 944 Lux (early dash model) was 20+ yrs old, was a pretty tatty example and would have had old tired suspension and an engine that probably was not developing the 170 ish HP it had when it rolled off the production line it posted a time pretty much exactly the same as the new Golf GTi, which has 198bhp and modern suspension, brakes, traction control, electronic brake distribution etc.
Not bad eh. Just goes to show that 1. BHP figures are no indication of how good a car really is, and 2. At the end of the day you can't beat a good old fashioned well engineered chassis.
Bearing in mind the TG track was designed by Lotus to give a good reflection of a cars performance combining challenging corners and a good straight, so is a pretty representative test I think.
Just for reference the quickest hot hatch was the Type R at 1m32s, so not that much further ahead than the Lux. Also the cream crackered 928 JC had got 1:35 (if you remember it had at least one piston that was gnawing its way through the Alusil) bore and the 924 got a similar time albeit on uprated suspension.
So big Respect to the 944 Lux!!
Also in that particular episode was the 'Buy a Porsche for £1500' thing. If you remember this culminated in the three cars setting a time round the track at the hands of the Stig.
Bearing in mind James May's 944 Lux (early dash model) was 20+ yrs old, was a pretty tatty example and would have had old tired suspension and an engine that probably was not developing the 170 ish HP it had when it rolled off the production line it posted a time pretty much exactly the same as the new Golf GTi, which has 198bhp and modern suspension, brakes, traction control, electronic brake distribution etc.
Not bad eh. Just goes to show that 1. BHP figures are no indication of how good a car really is, and 2. At the end of the day you can't beat a good old fashioned well engineered chassis.
Bearing in mind the TG track was designed by Lotus to give a good reflection of a cars performance combining challenging corners and a good straight, so is a pretty representative test I think.
Just for reference the quickest hot hatch was the Type R at 1m32s, so not that much further ahead than the Lux. Also the cream crackered 928 JC had got 1:35 (if you remember it had at least one piston that was gnawing its way through the Alusil) bore and the 924 got a similar time albeit on uprated suspension.
So big Respect to the 944 Lux!!
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