driving the XE 35t

Sorry - not true. You hear the re-circ valve in my 1991 Renault 21 turbo and it can be heard outside the car too. It’s just quieter.

If there’s no re-circ or BOV valve then it will be the sound of compressor surge - was just using the most common form of turbo noise.

It’s that delightful chirp of the turbo wastegate

Not mine (saw it on FB this morning) but this seems like the perfect opportunity....

I believe that the new 1.0 & 1.2 3 cylinder engines are brand new and developed by FEV for PSA (page 8 http://www.fev.com/fileadmin/user…)

I wasn’t 100% sure about them being identical. Considering that a lot of the issues on the Prince engine look to be of Germanic origin (timing chain tensioner failures, VANOS failures etc.) I still think pointing at PSA as the origin of the failures is a bit harsh!

It’s not a “PSA sourced engine”. It was jointly developed by BMW & PSA and the MINI engine is assembled at a different plant.

Nope - gently lift off as a sudden change will just unsettle the car even more. Once you’re off, dip the clutch to get all the capability of the tyres back to gripping the road.

Both she & Richard are great people.

It’s very openly discussed. At the races everyone knows who is running a standard car and who is running upgraded parts.

Máté, sorry to say but Goodwood is not the “last great vintage race”. The VSCC run 5 race meetings a year in the UK, plus 5 hillclimbs, some sprints and numerous other motoring events - all for vintage cars.

Longstone Tyres - plus the owner & his wife race a vintage (proper vintage - pre-1931) car.

So, why only four speeds, in this era of seven- and nine-speed autos?

This car was originally built by Mark Walker (he of 200HP Darracq driving sideways fame) and raced for a number of years by Mark, before being raced by Duncan and eventually Duncan bought it from Mark.

Quite bizarrely a few colleagues and I were talking about this only yesterday.

Quite often there are tax implications too. I have worked for 5 OEMs in the UK (including Ford, Nissan & JLR) and practically all of the pre-production cars have no duty paid on the parts that are imported, nor is there any purchase tax paid. The deal with the HMRC (our tax collectors) is that the cars are for…

There has to be a way to do that in all cars so that they can be tested in the emissions labs (on 2WD dynos anyway) otherwise the ESP etc. all get very confused!

The MSA Hillclimb Championship guys are just awesome to watch. I have only seen a few events with the top guys competing but it is just out of this world.