[Mike] This time, we want to make the ultimate hot hatch.
-[Elvis laughs] It's yellow. -I know!
[Mike] Yes, out of this battered Peugeot 205...
It's quite tatty around the edges, and the bumper's inside the car.
[Mike] ...the French gave us Brits the underpowered version...
-Put your foot down. -What do you mean, put my foot down? It is.
[Mike] . ..but we want to boost its performance...
-I want to go with throttle bodies. -What?
[Mike] ...and beat the Europeans at their own game.
Come on, Brewer. Come on.
Oh, this car is insane!
[opening theme music playing]
Go on, son. Off we go.
I mean, look how tight this corner is.
My face is gonna get torn off.
It's been a hard week in the workshop...
Get in.
...so I'm treating Elvis to a day out
driving one of the most iconic rally cars of all time.
Well, it sounds great. It feels very special.
The T16 205 is a pocket rocket.
They wanted to go rally in Peugeot, and the only way to do that
is you have to make a certain amount of road-going versions
of the rally car.
-They only made 200 of these. -Yeah.
They're so rare. It's a very special car because
everything was designed only around performance.
It had that powerful engine, but it's got a tubular space frame chassis.
It weighs nothing.
-It's all about performance. -It's all about performance. Yeah.
[engine revs]
Do you know how much this is worth, what you're driving?
It's too, I'm kind of not thinking about it.
I'm gonna terrify you when I tell you.
-Quarter of a million quid. Yeah. [laughs] -No! No!
That's madness, utter madness.
[engine revs]
[Elvis] Out of this car was born the 205 GTI,
which became such an iconic little hot hatch.
Yeah, this is the granddaddy of that.
[Elvis] Thanks, Peugeot and Mike.
But where exactly is all this going?
-What a car! -[laughs]
-And what a day. -Mate, what an experience.
It certainly reinvigorated my need
to somehow get us a Peugeot 205.
But even a 1.9 GTI these days are running at, like, 15 grand,
however, there is a cheap entry point into the 205 world,
and that's the 205 Rallye.
Yeah, they did a couple of versions of that,
one of them, the European spec version,
that was actually quite a good, fun little car. Decent horsepower for its day.
I'm not talking about the European version because they're quite a lot of money.
I was talking about this car that's actually out there online at the moment.
Bids are up at £2,500.
There's a very good reason for that.
It is the UK version, which was a bit rubbish.
-And it's yellow. -It's mustard, actually.
-It's definitely yellow. However, -That's mustard.
as a project, all cars can be improved, can't they?
[Mike] They're the words I want to hear.
So, shall I put in a nice, cheeky bid for us?
It's cheap, innit? So, why not?
[Mike] I'm going to stick my neck out and say it,
the 205 was the greatest hatchback of them all.
And the model that made its name was the T16,
the king of rallying in the 1980s.
That success was a catalyst for an extraordinary
15-year production run of cars.
A whopping five million were sold worldwide.
Everything from the XS to the GTI,
but they all come at top dollar prices these days.
But there is one little bargain out there,
the Rallye, a pared down super lightweight road model.
Manufactured from 1988 to 1992, there were two versions,
a Euro spec with a decent 103 horsepower,
and the UK model with just 75.
Did we upset the French or something?
So, with that puny power, models like the one I'm bidding on
will go cheap.
And guess what? I've won.
Time to take delivery of it at the workshop.
Mate, dry your hands, grab your coat,
-because guess what's arrived outside. -What?
The 205 Rallye.
Oh, wow. That was the one you took a gamble on.
You mustn't have even seen this yet. [bleep]
No, this is gonna be fresh for the both of us.
Let's have a look.
[laughs] Ah-ha.
-It's yellow! -I know. I know.
[Elvis] That is even more yellow than it looks in the pictures.
I didn't know it was going to be that bright.
But listen, really, we have no choice.
If you're going to buy one of these 205 Rallyes in England,
we've got three different flavors.
You've got 500 in Bianca, which is white,
250 in Express Yellow, which is this color,
of which there's only a handful left, and 80 in blue,
or the white ones people tend to keep.
The blue ones are non-existent, so if you're gonna buy one,
you have to go for the Express Yellow.
[Elvis] It's also quite tatty around the edges,
and the bumper's inside the car, and it's cracked.
-It's not ideal, is it? -[laughs] No.
We paid £2,850 for this.
I've got a funny feeling we've wasted that money.
It's what's under there that lets it down, isn't it?
Let's have a look.
It's a 1.4-litre,
single carb, it produces... Are you ready for this?
-Seventy-five horsepower. -Seventy-five horsepower?
My lawn mower's got more than that, mate. That's terrible. [laughs]
It's... Yeah.
The European spec version, they've got 103 horsepower,
which is where you come in.
See, this is the idea behind this car.
You're used to making stuff go faster,
so you can turn it into, oh, I don't know,
let's say 104 horsepower, maybe 105.
We'll have a car that we can take on the Europeans.
It's a huge amount of work. Even the engine alone,
massive amount of work, let alone the rest of the car
-which is also in a right state. -No, you'll do this easy.
Why don't we take it out for a spin around here now
and just see what else is wrong with it?
It's not strictly legal, it's got no headlights or bumper,
but we are on private ground. So, yeah, let's go drive it.
Right, then. Come on, Elvis.
Let's see how much of this 75 horsepower is still there.
Go on, put your foot down.
What do you mean, put my foot down? It is.
-That's it? -Are you sure it's got 75 horsepower, not 7.5?
[both laugh]
Mate, wait, is that it? And Peugeot sold this as a Rallye.
Oh, it's got a little noise to it.
[Elvis] Mate, that is so underpowered.
To measure nought to 60 you need a calendar,
not a stopwatch. [laughs]
Well, look, whatever happens, we're stuck with his car now,
so we're going to do it.
So, if we've got 75 horsepower,
how do we get to 107 horsepower?
This has got a single carburetor on it, pretty basic.
You could easily go twin carb.
Then you talk about rebalancing things like crank shafts, maybe pistons.
Now that's going to start really pushing the boundaries.
It's only a little engine, but I'm sure we could squeeze
-107 horsepower out of it. -Oh, see.
That's exactly what I'm after.
But, mate, listen, that's got me excited.
And if you could pull that off, this little car
might live up to its name of it being a Rallye.
I would be good, wouldn't it? And I would love to beat the Europeans.
Oh, that'd be fantastic.
[Elvis] This is currently more like a rally bicycle than a rally car.
It's gonna need a huge injection of power,
and that means overhauling the engine from top to bottom.
[upbeat music playing]
To kick everything off, I need to get that puny power unit out.
It's always a bit of a risk, buying a car online
that you haven't actually seen, and that is what Mike's done,
but this one's turned out to be pretty solid,
and has turned up exactly as it was described.
Now, these cars were a bit of a mystery.
Why on earth didn't Peugeot bring the full-blown
Euro spec version to the UK?
And there are a couple of schools of thoughts on why that happened.
It could have been too complicated or expensive
to convert the left-hand drive car with that engine
to right-hand drive for the UK market.
Or it could have been that Peugeot saw enough value
in creating this car as a limited edition
with just a few hundred ever made, compared to the 28,000
that they made of the Euro spec version.
It does, though, have some endearing characteristics,
like the fact that it's super lightweight
at less than 800 kilos,
so if we get the engine right, there's performance to be had.
So my first job is to get this lump out of here,
and then start work on turning it into the
Euro spec version beater that I know it can be.
[upbeat music playing]
To remove the 205 engine,
I need to disconnect the drive shaft from the gearbox and also the hubs.
But first, I've got to remove the wheels,
uncouple the suspension and undo the mounts.
[upbeat music playing]
Then finally, I can lower the engine out.
All right, so this is our starting point,
1.4-litre block, single carburetor.
of 1360CC
thanks to bore stroke of 75 and 77 millimeters.
It's got a massive power output of 75 brake horsepower
at 6,200 RPM,
and maximum torque figures of 80 pound feet of 4000 RPM
If you compare that to the Euro spec version,
that one has a 103 HP at 6800 RPM
and maximum torque figures of 89 pound feet at 5000 RPM.
So if you got any hope of trying to compete with that engine with ours,
we've got a massive amount of work ahead
and it all starts by stripping this one down to find out exactly what it has got.
Now, if we want to get the kind of power from this engine that we're hoping for,
there's a number of things we can do.
In fact, rarely is it ever the case
that you just bolt on an item and away you go.
We need to get more air and fuel in to increase the rate of combustion,
but if we do that, we also need to get rid of those gases in a more efficient manner.
If we're gonna do work at the top end of the engine to improve performance,
we gotta kind of match it at the bottom end
by lightning and balancing things like crankshaft and flywheel.
This engine is gonna be under a whole load more stress,
so I need to go through every single component
to make sure it's up to it.
I know from experience that we're treading a fine line.
If I push it too far, then that extra power could tear this engine apart.
We want to add a bit of va-va-voom
to our underpowered British 205 Rallye.
Our aim, to beat the Euro spec version,
and that means overhauling the engine
to cope with extra power.
Step one is balancing parts like the crankshaft,
and with the car about to head to the paint shop,
I'm up in Leicestershire.
Having stripped down the engine, I'm gonna start with the crankshaft,
but cos I haven't got all the kit in my workshop,
I'm meeting my mate, Billy, here at Midland Balancing
who's allowed me to come and use his workshop for the day.
-Billy, how are you, mate? -Hi. You all right?
This is what I was telling you about.
Excellent. Yeah, you know where the balancing machine is,
-so help yourself. -Brilliant. Cheers, mate.
A crankshaft converts the vertical movement of the pistons
into rotational movement,
which ultimately drives the wheels by the gearbox.
If it's unbalanced, then it won't do that job properly,
and we won't make the most of any extra power regenerating the engine.
Of course, balancing the crankshaft was done
when it was first made at the manufacturers,
but that's when the engine was only producing 75 horsepower.
If we want to push this harder,
the tolerance has become finer and finer,
and so the impact of any imbalances become magnified at the higher RPM
that we want to now push our engine to.
Balancing it involves adjusting the counterweights
to compensate for the moving components
so everything runs true with no wobble.
First, I'm stripping down the bottom end rotating assembly
and removing the clutch cover, flywheel and front pulley,
so I can work on just the crankshaft.
Now, this is a dynamic balancing machine.
It spins via a drive belt and an electric motor.
It's gonna spin the crankshaft at 450 RPM.
The reason we use 450 RPM is that it's fast enough
to give us an accurate reading, yet not too fast
to start introducing imperfections or distortions
as we measure the crankshaft's load.
When we get the information, we can take away material,
either by linishing little parts of the metal away,
or as the manufacturers did back in the beginning, drilling holes.
The process is laborious, it's a case of doing it a little bit,
tweaking it, put it back on the machine,
and taking more measurements until we get it as close to zero as we possibly can.
The machine will measure precisely how much the crankshaft
deviates from a straight line.
To keep my own measurements accurate,
I'm marking a starting position called a datum point,
so every time I use the machine,
I know where to take my readings from.
Then we spin it for about a minute to find any imperfections.
Okay, so I've got a set of numbers now, a reading on here.
Now, what this represents is these two numbers here,
which are either end of the crankshaft,
are how far out of balance it is.
The 22.5 reading immediately tells me
we're a good way out of balance.
Now, there's 17, the number underneath,
that's the angle of rotation from our starting position.
So, we look at it on here, we can see the start point,
and here, that zero, and if we rotate it 17 degrees,
which is probably going to be somewhere around there,
that's where we need to start removing material.
There is an element of guesswork to this.
So I'm taking my time and shaving just a little bit off to begin with.
Mess it up, and I'll be spending the next week rummaging around scrapyards,
trying to find a replacement crankshaft.
So we're definitely heading in the right direction.
The numbers are coming down towards that magic zero point,
which we may never finally achieve,
but if I can get them below five, I think I'll be pretty happy.
A smidge more, and I think we're almost there.
Oh, yes. Both ends are now less than two.
That's great. [laughs] It's amazing.
I am really happy with that.
You know, you could chase that for hours
and never quite end up that close to zero.
Job done. With the crankshaft more balanced than a Zen master,
it's ready to cope with the extra power
we're hoping to get out of the engine.
I'm putting it back together part by part,
so I can run the whole assembly through the machine,
and check the rest of the bottom end is also balanced.
The reason that we go through this process
with each of the components individually
is that the flywheel and the pulley, they're all interchangeable parts,
so if at some point throughout the engine's life,
these parts get replaced,
we still know that the bit at the center of it,
the crankshaft, is perfectly balanced,
and it's only these bits we need to worry about.
[Mike] But there's still a long way to go
before our 205's more powerful than my lawn mower.
Step two is the tricky job of making some new pistons.
Do you know? I'm really loving this challenge
that me and Elvis have set ourselves
to try and do better than the Euro spec 205 Rallye,
and I reckon what we need is some lightweight pistons.
So, I'm on my way to the West Midlands
to go and meet a company, they're called Omega Pistons,
and they reckon they can forge me my very own bespoke set.
This is gonna be cool.
Our current factory-standard pistons
just won't be up to hand, they need extra power,
so I'm getting some new ones made,
and not just by any old company.
The guys here make pistons for Formula One,
Moto GP, and speedway teams, amongst others.
I do love these places.
And the chap I'm meeting, Andy, is one of the best in the business.
Andy. Hey!
So when I spoke to you on the phone,
I told you I've got this 205 Rallye.
I'm determined to beat the European spec car,
they get a much higher horsepower than we ever did in the UK.
-So what have you come up with? -What I'm thinking of is
we'll go for a semi-style forge piston.
A forge piston, it's just lighter, is it?
It's much lighter, and so it moves faster.
It can be, but it's also a lot stronger,
-so it will withstand the RPM without any distortion. -Gotcha.
Distortion creates friction, friction slows the engine down.
Gotcha. So what we need to do is keep a solid, stable piston
within that bore going up and down.
That piston will go up and down the bore
-300 times a second. -That's amazing.
-Think about that. Three hundred times a second. -A lot, isn't it?
When it's at top dead center, it stops momentarily,
it then goes to bottom dead center, stops momentarily,
and then repeats the cycle. In between there,
it is accelerated to 85 miles an hour,
-and stopped again. -That's crazy.
It goes through a lot of pressures.
There's a lot to take into account when you're doing the design work.
So, you're telling me that we can build
a lightweight piston unique to my car.
-This is designed specifically for us. -Yeah.
-Er... because -I love it.
I've looked at the compression ratio
that you want to run, the standard piston, nine to one.
I think we can safely go up to 12 to one.
Finally, you're going to get a bigger bang on the top of your piston,
-which is what we want. -Oh, fantastic.
Yeah, I love the sound of that. But can we actually build one?
Yeah, of course, we can.
-Let's go. We'll go this way. -Lovely.
[upbeat music playing]
[Mike] To create my new pistons,
aluminum is cut to 40mm chunks called billets.
Then they're put into an oven and heated to 450 degrees.
At this temperature, they are malleable to forge
but not enough to lose the strength of the structure.
And his colleague, Jason, has got one ready to work on.
Yeah, I can feel the heat.
Yeah. So what he's gonna do now is he's rolling the billets
in a lubricant, so it doesn't stick in the pot.
So that billet is 450 degrees?
-450 degrees. Yeah. -Right.
[Mike] And it's gonna go into that mold
-which is obviously very hot as well. -Yeah.
[Mike] In the mold, it's pumped with 600 tons of pressure
to hollow it out into the correct shape.
And there you have it.
-Just see it pop up... Pop up out to come out. -Yeah.
-That is fantastic. -And what'll happen is
that will then come out, but you can see,
-nothing is stuck, because of all the lubricant. -Yeah.
What we'll do now, we're going to check it all out,
so if you have a look at that!
Oh, look at that. Look at the inside.
So we want to make sure that all the lettering is made,
there's no drag marks anywhere and that it looks even.
[Mike] Before they're finished,
my new pistons are being precision turned
down to the exact diameter of our 205 cylinders.
The holes are bored in them.
Finally, they're cleaned up and heat-treated.
It's an incredible process,
and I know these pieces of engineering genius
will make a real difference to our engine.
Plus, the whole set cost me just £400, a bargain.
I'm gonna say, Andy, I've really enjoyed seeing
a range of pistons being made here today.
I suppose the shame is, with all this work you've done,
they're like little trinkets, like a little jewel,
and yet, they're never gonna be seen,
-they're gonna be buried in an engine. -Yeah.
All this is gonna get covered in carbon, have oil on it,
it's gonna have all those pressures that we spoke about earlier go through it.
But what we do know is we've got a quality piston going in your engine.
It's absolutely brilliant. Listen, I appreciate you today, I really do.
I can't wait to get my set sent down to me.
As soon as they're finished, we'll get them on down to you.
Super, mate. And, er, it's been a real honor.
Yeah, it's been good having you here today.
[Elvis] Whilst Mike's been away,
our 205 has returned from the paint shop.
I've fitted two new bumpers I bought online for £75,
plus the crankshaft's back in the engine.
I've also added a performance camshaft
and had the cylinder heads polished and ported.
Now, I'm confident it can cope with more power.
So next, I've got to start generating that extra performance,
and I've had a light-bulb moment.
Right. With the car now looking amazing
and the engine well on its way,
I'm gonna turn my attention to the fuel system.
And what I want to do is upgrade the single carburetor
that the car came with to this, a set of throttle bodies.
Now, normally, throttle bodies are very expensive,
but these, well, these are second-hand
and off a Suzuki GSX-R600 motorbike,
and came at a fraction of the cost, just £125 for the set.
But they operate at a much higher fuel pressure,
and that means it's quite a lot of work to do to the car
to make this happen.
The engine generates power by combining fuel and air.
The more fuel and air we can get into the cylinders,
the more power we can get out.
The throttle bodies will hopefully help us to do just that,
as they'll move us from a carburetor
to a fuel injection system.
Before I tackle the air side, I'm starting with the fuel.
There are four throttle bodies, one for each cylinder,
and they need a high-pressure fuel feed
which our 205 never came with.
And this here is our high-pressure pump.
I'm just mounting it onto the bulkhead
using these rubber bobbins, which are gonna take up the vibration
and stop that irritating sound from penetrating through to the cabin.
Now the original carburetor, of course,
has its own little fuel reservoir inside the carb itself
that the throttle bodies don't have that.
So we have to replicate it using this, it's called a swirl pot.
This is gonna be our little fuel reservoir
which is filled up via a low-pressure system coming from the tank.
It comes in via this pipe here. Now what happens as it goes in,
it swirls around in this circular motion
inside the tank as it fills it up. That's why it's called a swirl pot.
And that motion not only fills the tank,
which enables the high-pressure pump to draw a supply at the bottom
and then feed the throttle bodies,
but in doing so, it also separates the air from the fuel,
and any air pockets or excess fuel
will then come back out of this overflow
and find its way back to the tank.
Our new fuel pump operates at seven bar,
but our motorbike throttle bodies need just half of that,
so I'm going to step the pressure down with this regulator.
Then connect everything up with these hoses.
[upbeat music playing]
That's kind of it. I've got all the major components now,
and I've got a fuel supply coming from the tank
to fill up our swirl pot here,
that's then going to be drawn from by the high-pressure pump via this regulator,
dropping that pressure down to three and a half bar that the throttle bodies need
which will supply it directly into the engine,
hopefully, giving us that extra bit of performance we need.
But this is a bit of a gamble.
We're trying to take on and beat the Europeans
by adding more power to our UK spec 205 Rallye.
And to do that, I'm unleashing my inner biker
by fitting throttle bodies from a motorbike.
Time to fess up to Mike.
[laughs] Look at the paint work. That looks epic.
So, my forge pistons must be back in the engine.
Yeah, they are. There's a lot of work done on here.
It's got a new exhaust, the whole bottom end has been balanced,
the crankshaft, pulley, flywheel.
We must be getting close to 100 horsepower now.
Right. Well, it starts it off with 74 horsepower.
The magic target for us to even get close to the Euro spec car
will be, like, over 105, so we've still got a ways to go.
-So, you got any ideas? -Of course, I've got ideas.
I've decided that instead of going carburetors,
I want to give each one of the four cylinders its own fuel source.
I want to go with throttle bodies.
Throttle bodies? It's a great idea,
-but they are rather expensive done over this. -Well, they are,
unless you get them from a second-hand Suzuki
GSX-R600 motorbike.
-I beg your pardon? -Yeah.
So, you're going to take motorcycle throttle bodies
and put them on our Peugeot engine?
It will work. There's a bit of work to make that happen,
but I've got total faith that I can make it work.
If you've got faith, I've got faith, cause this is what you do.
You make stuff go faster, and I'm going to find somebody that we can go up against.
-What, with the Euro spec? -Yeah, why not?
-It is a proper test, yeah. But I love it. -You do?
-Yeah. -Good. All right, crack on.
Nice one.
[Elvis] While Mike gets his roller decks out,
I can get the engine back in
and start part two of the throttle body job,
mounting them to our car's engine.
[upbeat music playing]
They need to be attached to the manifold
which feeds the air and fuel to the engine,
but our 205 manifold only has a single pipe,
and I need to have four.
Now I'm absolutely convinced that fitting these throttle bodies
is gonna get as close as that performance we're after,
the problem is that unfortunately, these throttle bodies
will not fit on the existing manifold.
As you can see, it only had a single carburetor on there.
So that's got to go, and that unfortunately means
I've got to make myself a new one.
Not only do I have to cut four pipes for the four-pronged manifold...
...but because the diameter of the throttle body is larger than the engine port...
...the pipe needs to be a different size at each end.
To make the pipes fit, I've cut strips out of them.
To get them to the right size, I'm using a hammer
and an inlet flange which you can pick up easily online for just 20 quid.
Then to stop any air escaping, I'm welding the cuts shut.
I also need to change the angle so that I can match the pipes up
with the spacing of our throttle bodies.
If these parts were longer and I was talking about
some greater angles than the ones I actually need,
I just go straight in and weld in some preformed bends.
But we're talking about angles that are very, very slight,
and the piece of pipe is quite short.
I'm going to use a technique called pie cutting,
where I cut out a sort of wedge shape.
It looks a little bit like a slice of a pie, hence the name.
And then I can bend it over, closing up that gap,
giving me the angle that I need.
[upbeat music playing]
Now we're getting there. The pipes are cut, bent,
and it's again time to weld everything together.
Nearly there. Nearly made my own manifold.
This turned out to be quite a lot of work.
What I've done has not only saved us quite a lot of money,
but hopefully got us close enough to the performance we need
to beat the your Euro spec version. So I'm very happy.
[Mike] Whilst Elvis plays with these pipes,
I'm busy sorting something for the weekend.
Don't be so cheeky. Yes, I've got the pictures.
I'm looking at it now. I know, it looks rather racy.
[laughs] All right, mate. See you later. Bye-bye.
Elvis, you're going to love this.
-What's happened? -Right, Angus around the corner...
-Yeah. -...who's got a restoration company,
his son, Max, is a bit of a race driver,
and guess what? The family own
-a proper Peugeot 205 European spec Rallye. -No way!
He's just sent me the pictures of it. How good is that?
-That looks cool. -That is Rallye spec.
-It's got a little roll cage in it as well, so... -Yeah.
He reckons he's going to rinse us.
-Does he? [laughs] That's fighting talk, that is. -It is fighting talk.
So I've asked him to meet us at Pembrey Race Circuit.
-Good track, yeah. -Good track, where we can put our UK spec car
up against his more powerful, so he thinks,
European spec car, and hopefully, we can rinse him.
That is a proper challenge, isn't it? But, erm,
I suppose until we get ours finished and then to a rolling road,
we won't have any idea, really, how powerful ours is,
but I think it might be close.
The only thing that sets our car apart from this install was
is those wheel arches, which I absolutely love,
those European arches.
So I've taken the liberty of ordering a set,
they're on their way to the workshop.
If you can paint them mustard to match the rest of the car
and get them screwed on, it'll look the part.
It's literally the most yellow car we have ever done.
Something must be wrong with your eyesight.
-It's mustard. -Nice one. I love a challenge.
Yeah, top work.
[Elvis] But before our showdown with the Euro spec,
I need to finish my throttle body upgrade.
I've connected them up to the engine via my newly fabricated manifold.
Next, I need to configure them.
And the purpose of these throttle bodies
is to give each cylinder its own individual air and fuel source
to aid performance. And just down here,
behind these throttle plates, is a vacuum port,
whose job is to make sure
that each cylinder is getting the correct amount of airflow
when you put your foot on the throttle.
So at low revs or low throttle,
if each cylinder is getting a different amount of air,
it will run lumpy and less smooth,
and over time, it can even make it less reliable.
The vacuum ports are adjustable,
so I'm gonna use these gauges to measure the amount of air that's going through each port
and then tweak them all individually
using these little screws.
There's one primary one on the end
which actually adjusts all four cylinders,
and then there are little individual ones in between each port.
Now, once the engine's fired up, I'm gonna tweak those one by one,
moving from left to right,
now that I've got each of the cylinders
individually isolated via these clamps,
and I'm gonna be looking at the gauges to make sure that all four
are nicely balanced between each other.
So, I think we're just about ready to fire it up and get started.
[upbeat music playing]
[engine starts]
This is a bit like tuning a guitar.
Each string has to be tuned individually,
so when they're all played together, the sound harmonizes perfect.
I'm not really looking for an exact measurement on these gauges,
but what I am trying to find is a point where they're all
nicely balanced with each other.
And it often means the tiniest of tweaks, one by one,
and it might need quite a few passes
until I get it really, really close.
It's very small adjustments.
After a bit of fettling, I think we're pretty close.
Yes, perfect.
Each one of the gauges is reading very similar,
which tells me that each of our four cylinders
are perfectly balanced with each other.
And that means that this great engine
and this great car are now ready for the race of its life.
[Mike] We bought a UK spec Peugeot 205 Rallye
with a pretty pathetic 75 horsepower.
Mate, that is so underpowered.
To measure nought to 60, you need a calendar, not a stopwatch.
[Mike] But if anyone can make it run faster than a Euro spec,
it's my Elvis...
I want to go with throttle bodies.
-I beg your pardon? -Yeah.
[Mike] ...with a helping hand from yours truly.
We can build a lightweight piston
-unique to my car? -Yeah.
I love the sound of that.
[Mike] So now it's ready for the ultimate test,
a track showdown against its European rival
before we, hopefully, sell it on for a decent profit.
I bought a car in an online auction for £2,850.
Elvis's fuel system upgrade was £130.
The motorbike throttle bodies and ECU were £701.
Pistons and parts for the engine rebuild,
£962.
New bumpers, decals, arches and paint, £1,790.
Fresh tires and suspension, £860,
while seat covers and carpets were £645,
which means our 205 Rallye
owes us a grand total of £7,938.
A hefty price tag for a 75 horsepower car.
But I reckon ours is well beyond that now...
So we're heading to a race circuit in Wales
to see if our little yellow beauty can finally cut the mustard.
[laughs]
How good is this? Look at us. Listen to it.
We're in the Welsh valleys, right?
The scenery outside is epic. This little car sounds pfff.
I just, I can't believe how good it sounds, it sounds astonishing.
[Elvis] I'll tell you what, mate, this has been
a huge amount of work,
mostly of course in the engine, but on top of that,
we've upgraded the suspension because it needed it.
It's had the heads polished and ported, upgraded camshaft.
The list goes on and on and on.
Of course, the new ECU to run all of that,
and I had to take it to a rolling road.
Talking of rolling road, horsepower,
-how much have we got? -Oh!
Well, I do know the number, but I'm not going to tell you just yet,
because I want you to feel what this car is like
-on the circuit. -Tell me.
No, mate, just be patient, be patient.
Because what you're going to find,
particularly on the racetrack, it is gonna blow your mind
how different this car is to when we first picked it up,
and I reckon it's going to be a really close call, you know.
A really close challenge going up against
a bona fide Euro spec 205 Rallye.
But, look, if we can get through the day, and the car survives,
I've got a phone call to make to a guy called Nige,
who's found out through contacts
that we've got this car potentially for sale,
-because I haven't even advertised it yet. -Wow.
-Guess where he is? -Where?
He's upside down, he's in New Zealand.
-Mate, that's incredible. -And I think,
possibly, I might be able to get us a nice, decent profit of 12.5 grand,
and it might be on his way down under.
[Mike] But before a possible 11,000-mile trip to the other side of the world,
we've got just 1.4 miles at Pembrey Circuit to tackle.
Nestled in the south of Wales,
it's the perfect place to see if our pumped-up Peugeot
can beat a genuine Euro spec.
It's been brought along by young race driver, Max.
Right, Elvis. This is the son of a friend of mine,
-this is Max, this is Elvis. -Hello, mate, how are you?
-Thanks for bringing down the car, Max. -No worries.
It looks lovely. Tell me a bit about it then.
Well, this is my Euro spec 205.
It's been built by Peugeot-Talbot Sport,
so they've done a fair few bits, where it's got a cage,
-it's got a limited slip diff. -[Mike] Whoa!
[Max] Hasn't got a lot of carpet.
So it's no longer just a standard car,
no door panels...
-[knocks] -That's not even glass, is it?
-No, yeah. No, no... -So you saved weight everywhere,
this is a full-going road car with everything in it.
-How old are you? -Eighteen.
How old are you, Mike?
I'll be getting my bus pass soon.
Right. How much do you weigh?
Seventy-two kilos.
Well, last time I weighed myself I was 18, I was 72 kilos,
-so about the same. -It's even. Same, yeah. Okay.
Well, it's gonna be close. What I'm gonna do
is I'm going to send you both out onto the racetrack.
You'll go on my first countdown,
and then five seconds later, you'll go in our car.
You're gonna chase him, cos the last thing I want you to do
is get too close to each other and start trading paint.
I'm going to time both of your laps,
I'll meet you back here at the end of that lap,
and I'll let you know how we got on.
-Sounds good. -Can I get lunch first?
No. We need to save more weight, mate.
No more lunch. All right?
-I'll see you out on track. -Be prepared to lose.
[dramatic music playing]
[Mike] Whilst Elvis is keeping shtum about the new power of our engine,
I know it's going to be well over the original 75 horsepower.
But will it be enough to beat Max's Euro spec
with his weight-reducing race mods?
Right. Here we go.
Next to me is young racing driver, Max,
who looks quite mean and menacing.
He's got racing gloves on, he's got a race suit,
I'm in my shirt.
I've got the carpet, I've got the seats,
he's got none of that.
This is going to be tough, and he's, I've got no chance.
[Elvis] With both cars in position on the start line...
-[engines revving] -...it's time to race.
Are you ready? Here we go, then.
This is terrifying.
Max, three, two, one, go.
Max is off. He's got a little bit of wheel spin off the line.
[engine revving]
-[radio beeps] -And, Mike, three, two, one, go.
Oh, I've got a lot of wheel spin off the line.
I've got it off, I've got it away.
Whoa-ho-ho! It's in second gear.
Already I can see Max disappearing into the distance,
but I'm catching him up as fast as I can.
Whoa! On the brakes, on the brakes, on the brakes, Mike.
Turn into his first turn. Look at me just turning.
God, this car has got so much power, I'm just wheel spinning.
That yellow car has got a lot of power.
He almost reeled him in to down the straight.
Oh, this little car is revving so highly.
Max is hard on the brakes.
I'm following him, I'm hard on the brakes as well.
[laughs] I can hear those lightened forged pistons
bouncing away there under the bonnet of this car.
So these two are really pushing it,
I'm not sure there's much between them.
He's not disappearing, I'm gonna tell you.
Oh, Max is on the brakes heavy.
So am I up on the brakes, I think we're turning in.
I'm catching him up.
Yeah, I'm turning, turning, turning.
So, I've got...
Oh, this car is insane. Trying to chew my face off.
Look at me, I'm being thrown around the cockpit.
Come on, Brewer. Come on.
Right over onto the curbs. They are really pushing it.
It feels like he's about the same distance he was from myself
holding onto him. Look at that. He's just there.
He's not that far away.
Come on, little car.
Here we go to a fast part of this circuit.
Remember, we've got those throttle bodies as well on this car
which is making it scream its little lungs out.
Here comes Max now at the final corner.
And I'm coming down the last bend. Come on.
The car is killing me.
Here he comes. Look at him.
Onto the start-finish straight.
Here he goes.
-Go on, Mike. Go on! -Come on!
Come on, you can do it. I hope that's within five seconds.
Whoa!
What a lap! Max did a great job.
Well done, mate. Oh.
I feel with some of the improvements that Elvis has made,
I got a funny feeling I was... I was within the same time
as Max came around that lap,
but we're about to find out when we pull in.
[Elvis] Well, I'm the one with a stopwatch, matey.
Trust me, there really isn't much in it.
-That looked epic. -It was absolutely fantastic.
-Mate, you have built one astonishing little car. -Oh.
It is so fast, it's wheel-spinning everywhere.
-What is the horsepower of this car? -You wanna know, then?
-Yeah, go on then. The horsepower. -Horse power.
I took it to the rolling road, it started off with...
Seventy-four, 75 horsepower? ...74, and you had...
-About 105. -...105. Yeah.
A hundred and thirty-five horsepower.
-No way! Seriously? -Yes.
-That engine is brilliant. -What?
-That is astonishing. And that explains it. -Wow.
I can really feel it, the extra power from that engine.
-Nice. That is absolutely... Well done, Elvis. -Thanks again.
But all the work has really paid off. It sounds great,
and you could see you closing it up on the straights,
and you were pulling away a bit out of the corners,
because you've got a limited slip diff.
With this, we haven't got it, which means it was very close.
-You wanna know how close? -Go on, then.
How far behind him was I?
All right, Max, this is your stopwatch.
-You did it in one minute, 29.10. -One, twenty-nine...
-[Elvis] Very respectable. -[Mike] Oh, that's tough.
-One, twenty-nine, one. -Our little car,
-One 29... -One... Oh!
-...point-two-eight. -[laughs]
Mate, this is... Mate,
-18/100ths of a second behind. -There's no way. Lovely.
I'm so proud of what we've turned out.
That is a brilliant little car.
Oh, mate, you've done such an amazing job.
Max, thank you so much for bringing that down
and giving us the opportunity.
You've been brilliant, but now,
now it's the time to sell it, because I've got to phone up Nigel
and see if he wants to put a deal together.
After that fantastic track test,
I'd love to keep hold of our hot hatch,
but needs must.
So let's see if Nige in New Zealand wants to take the 205 off our hands.
Nige?
-Mike, how are you? -I'm all right.
Not bad at all, mate. How are you?
-I'm very well, thank you. -Nige...
Nige, your backdrop looks astonishing.
What an array of cars you've lined up for me.
And it's real, it's real. It's not a fake background.
What's that? A 996 GT?
No, that's just the Turbo one.
-Is it? Well, nice. -So, this is close to that.
-E-Type Jaguar? -Yes, V-12, manual.
Well, I can see you've got the best British and the best of German there,
the only thing you're missing is the best of France,
which is this wonderful little 205 Rallye that we've got,
so hopefully, you've seen the pictures, and you like what you see?
It looks stunning. It's amazing.
Yeah, you've done a really good job of it.
Nige, why would you want one of these little 205s?
Growing up in the UK, we used to see them all the time,
all the GTIs, we've never seen the Rallyes,
and Rallye was always something from the '80s.
I thought, "You know what?
Nineties, this is gonna be the car."
So, I'm actually sat in the space where it's gonna go right now.
[laughs] Well, it sounds like you've already decided you want to buy it.
As you know, this car is not even advertised yet,
I need £12,500 for it.
If I do put it out there on the Internet,
I think I'm going to sell it in a heartbeat. So what do you say?
Yeah, I think that's a good price, Mike. I'm happy with that.
-So, £12,500. -Yeah.
Hold out your virtual hand.
You've got yourself a deal. Well done, Nigel.
You just brought a cracking car.
Fantastic. Thanks so much, Mike.
It's a pleasure, mate. Hope you enjoy it for many years to come.
[upbeat music playing]
Our little UK spec 205 Rallye
really was a bold and ambitious plan,
but we pulled it off.
We built a car that can not only take on
the best of France, but equal it.
And undoubtedly, if it had a better driver
behind the cockpit, it'll win. It'll even better it.
Now it just goes to prove that with Elvis in the workshop,
he is destined, that man, to make stuff go faster
and he can really pull it off. And as for me,
well, I can prove that I can still wheel and deal.