Day 1 – Our new car
It was a bit of a no brainer for us really, TMS specialise in the VX220 Turbo and Lotus announce the Europa with a Vauxhall VX220 turbo engine in it – what would you do?
I have to say we all thought the press pictures didn’t do the car any favours at all and I was regretting putting an order down for one so early as I was convinced Lotus would ‘freshen up’ the design a la Subaru when they brought out the frog eyed monster that was the Impreza C but after spending a little time with one in the flesh and then seeing one of the road I decided that pictures really do lie – the Europa is actually very nice looking.
The plan is very simple for this car; do exactly what we already do with the VX220 Turbo – improve the brakes, suspension, exterior and give it quite stupid levels of power that will enable the car to embarrass everything on the road today. We’re up to 350bhp on the VXT so it shouldn’t be too hard to get the Europa into Noble slaying territory for a few £££.
Ours was supplied by Merrits Lotus in Amersham and a thoroughly nice process it was too, Martin (the sales blokey) even brought it round for us to have a play and stick it up on a ramp, he took all the “it’s a bloody Vauxhall” comments from the techies in good heart too, although it was very clear that a lot of our job had already been done, Lotus really have taken the goods from the VXT and put them in a different package.
As we’ve come to love and expect from the VXT the early drives have been a bit dull, the Vauxhall engine is a royal pain in the arse to get loosened up, it really does need 3/4k miles before it starts to generate power so if anyone has test driven a demonstrator and felt under whelmed don’t be surprised, they all feel like that. We mentioned this to Vauxhall when the VXT came out and the response was to tell the dealers to run the demonstrators for higher mileages and use them – certainly works, try a car with 5k miles on it and it’s in a different league to a delivery miles special so don’t write off the car from one short test drive.
This lack of power in the tight engine manifests itself very clearly on the dyno (shown below) 190bhp at the flywheel is about right, give it another thousand miles and that should be the quoted 200bhp but wont feel that fast for another thousand miles after that.
 |
 |
Build quality is the best I’ve seen, certainly better than the VXT and even better than the VXR220 (limited edition VXT) which was by far the best built VX220 by far. The whole cabin feels nice and well built and was squeak free. There is lots of carpet everywhere and the door slams with a BMW’esque thud rather than the ‘crap I’ve broken it’ noise you get from a VX220, how long this effect lasts is unknown however. The view out the back is best described as ‘crap’ with a blind spot big enough to hide Buckinghamshire in, the visible boot hinges equally unpleasant and the handling certainly designed by lawyers rather than chassis engineers – they really, really don’t want you to crash this. This is good to some extent as the standard engine map delivery is a bit hit and miss, if you look at the dyno chart there is a black hole in power where Lotus have to pass emissions tests. Fortunately we can get rid of that quite easily, especially as it’s a test that only manufacturers have to adhere to – its not an MOT thing. This power dip (the VXT had it so its not Lotus’ fault) does mean the power can come on a bit aggressively hence the handling is set to keep you alive rather than challenge an Elise in the twisties. We can change that too.
By far the best bit is the gearbox, the throw to 3rd is too long though, as its short sweet and really suits the engine power delivery and by the end of the first day I was really enjoying the drive and (dare I say it) I actually started to ‘get’ this car.
Initially I wondered what the hell Lotus were playing at, the Elise is a perfect chassis with a crap engine (say what you like at the K and the Toyota, any engine with less than 200llb’s of torque is always going to be an exercise in gear box stirring to get it moving along) so they get the Vauxhall lump but then re-design the body to be a GT car? Sorry, I was less than convinced. Yes, the Europa is a lot easier to get in/out of than a VX220 or an Elise but it’s hardly a Cayman, especially when you look at the price tag so I initially thought this was a dog with fleas. However I’m now convinced, this car does have a niche, the drive is Elise like in its handling but offers a lot more creature comforts and a more solid feel. Its quieter on the motorway, it’s possible to have a phone conversation at daft speeds and I’ve no doubt it’ll whip the Porsche into a corner with outright handling. However what I wasn’t convinced of was that the car lacks the balls to take the fight beyond the reaches of the Porsche….. so that’s our plan.
We know we can transform this car to truly stupid levels of performance, yes the Vauxhall engine has a cast block and not an alloy one but its nigh on bullet proof and can take very silly amounts of power. Our stage 4 VXT’s can hit 60mph in less than 3.5 seconds and can corner as well (if not better) than the highest specification Elises and Exiges. Add to this the fact that the VX220 has the aerodynamics of a brick it means to us that the Europa has the chance of being not only a fantastic road car but also an even better race car……both things we intend to find out.
First up for our car is to suck out the ECU code and see whats what, after that we’ll play with some remaps and see what we can do. After that its off to Milltek Sport to have a race exhaust sorted (we can’t decide if we go for some Zonda inspired quad pipes or not) and then further engine ECU work to get a stage 2 tune out of it. In between these plans we’ve got a set of Team Dynamics wheels to bolt on, better tyres, Nitron suspension and our AP Racing brake kit and we think it’ll be about right. Add on a few choice bits of bling, swap the race engine from the VXT into it and then we’ll race it…..but that’s another idea altogether.
