Renault 5 Turbo2

[epoch911]

Dresden is a city with a name that is obviously indelibly marked in history and strangely it made me feel a bit nervous about going out there. It felt like a long way away. I nosed around the website and it all looked very professional - plenty of early 911 interest there - but still it felt a bit like "behind the iron curtain"

http://klassiker-handel.de/

Eventually I picked up the phone to speak to the dealer - or rather I tried to and discovered that his English was very poor. Seems that English is less widely spoken in the former East Germany and Jörg was definitely of the old school. He clearly seemed surprised to be hearing from someone in the UK as the car was only advertised on mobile.de and the language barrier became higher and higher as I probed for more info on the car. He wasn't the most responsive over email either and I began to realise that Google Translate was perhaps not the best tool for discussing turbo lag

In the end I enlisted the help of my brother who lives in Frankfurt to translate and craft emails for me...and things improved.

The car was only a 2 owner car - the first being Renault who seemed to have used the car as something of a 'team' car. Not a famous car, or a competition car (totally not enough BHP) or even a car that had been used in anger but one that appeared to be part of some PR machine around various events. I was quite happy with that. It had been supplied pearlescent white and resprayed in 1984 and all of the colour changes were paint, not stickers - always a good sign in my book.

The second owner

http://www.one-man-factory.de/

builds scale model cars of incredible detail which is exactly the kind of previous owner that, on paper, looks like a winner.

On paper that is....

[richkaz]

Has this thread conked out , or did I miss something ?

[epoch911]

Not conked out...just been away!

The former owner having his own business website was a bit of a blessing....I phoned him for a chat.
Luckily he spoke great English and was able to give me plenty of background - as well as a few more pictures.
The dealer had paid cash for the car from him so it wasn't his any longer - the dealer had intended to use it for rallying that his dealership ran but had never got round to it. He had no vested interest so it was good to hear his viewpoint. He'd spent a lot of time and money making the car lighter (with plenty of carbon fibre and kevlar on the interior), working on the performance of the engine but not trying to take it too far to the point where the engine was stressed beyond its healthy limits...Renault managed to get 320 bhp out of these engines back in the day but thankfully he hadn't tried to do that!
Interestingly he felt the asking price was over the odds...food for thought.

Dresden was surprisingly easy to get to...EasyJet to Berlin and 1.5 hr drive. But as the weather closed in, I did begin to wonder whether Eastern Germany in January was the perfect setting for test driving a R5T2...





But when I arrived and they opened the doors to the workshop, the doubts disappeared. I'd forgotten what a fantastic feeling car buying is. Of course there's all the searching, the dreaming, the chasing down of rumours. The visits to dealers or auctions. And when you're finally in front of the car that seems to tick all the boxes, it's a feeling like nothing else. I'd be dreadful at poker. I can't contain my excitement and enthusiasm and I'm a bloody terrible negotiator.





The dealer had even kindly supplied a fluent English speaker to ensure they got every ounce of my budget out of me. They knew I was going to buy it the moment I walked through the door. B4rstards.

Had a look over the documentation. a 2 owner car only as I had been told. A mass of bills for work over the last 15 years. But very few miles in the last 5 years. So plenty of new seals, pipework and gaskets likely to be on the cards.

Got the car up on the ramp and began to nose around in more detail. It all looked straight. Shut lines good. Chassis rails true.
And er...And that was about as far as my knowledge went. The poster on my wall in the 80's never went into the details dammit!

So I phoned John Price Rally and for the next hour they talked me through some of the more important points. Brake set up. Engine details. Cooling. Torsion bar removal. Paint code, chassis plates. etc. The car seemed to be right in all the right areas.















It even still had the primitive fibreglass tube in the bonnet area - an early anti crumple zone apparently though it looked suspiciously like a highly rigid GRP tube that would be fired through the passenger cabin at high speed in the event of a front end collision!


Next stop...the test drive

[Tosh]

Point of order...

Your girls loved the school run in the chartreuse thingy. How do you do that in the car with the engine where the rear seats should be?

Selfish barsteward

[epoch911]

Au contraire Tosh... in my mind it's an utterly selfless choice - each one of my children now gets my undivided attention when they travel with me and that leaves them feeling loved and valued. When they can hear what I'm saying of course.

Anyway they stopped doing the same things as each other a long time ago so it's my payback for the endless taxiing.

So there.

[Tosh]

Is that the emotional equivalent of man maths? Like it!
And hurry up with the updates. Epic car (albeit I am delighted you don't live in my road as I guess it's not the quietest)

[epoch911]

The first test drive the R5.

http://vid233.photobucket.com/albums/ee ... au91o4.mp4

It's broken, surely.

There's little (or nothing!) going on below 2k RPM and trying to get the thing off the line is initially a frustrating, awkward process. The car is lumpy at idle (the downside of having a race cam fitted) and has a sintered race clutch which you just can't slip gently. Add to that, the famous turbo lag and it all adds up to a totally different way of driving to the 911. It's going to take some mastering. Still that's what I wanted...

http://vid233.photobucket.com/albums/ee ... mlwi9f.mp4

10 mins in and I'm getting a bit more used to it. It seems the only way to drive it is to rev the bollix of it the entire time. So waiting at traffic lights is like being 17 all over again. Let the revs rise to about 3K and wait for the turbo to spin up. Then drop the clutch and hold on. It's much better for making progress but does make me look like a bit of a tw4t around town. Nothing changes I guess...

Coming up to T junctions where you can pull away in 2nd because you haven't had to stop and go into 1st are the trickiest...need a lot of revs there and the roads are slippery and it's very twitchy! (the tyres are way past their best to be honest). I've since learnt that left foot braking to keep the revs high is the way forward. And I've also learnt that I don't know how to do it. Oh dear.

Other than that, the car is really nice to drive. It's got a really buzzy, urgent engine and the need to keep the revs up makes for an exciting and animated drive. It gets very hot inside of course and I'm going to need to ear defenders for anything longer than about 15 mins! It's a symphony of noises...the turbo spinning up (sounds worryingly like a police siren coming up behind you), the induction whoosh, urgent rushing then constant whistles, pops and bangs on overrun. It has to be said it's massively addictive.

Drive over and back to the workshop for the moment of truth.



A couple of phone calls later ( "Why are you asking me dear? You've already made up your mind" ) and the deal is done over lunch - I made sure the dealer paid - I was very hungry

I left back for Berlin in bit of a state of shock. Despite the time I'd spent researching, all the lost leads, cars I didn't want etc. it still felt like I'd rushed into it...

Now to work out how to get it home, get it registered and get it sorted.

Just the DVLA to overcome. What could possibly go wrong.....

[haasad]

What a bonkers car.'....brilliant. Years ago a friend introduced me to Pentti Arikola, he gave us a lesson in left foot braking in my Delta Integrale ......I still can,t do it properly.....Try musicians earplugs for the noise, more discreet than over ear jobs and the little inserts make them tunable to the volume.

[epoch911]

A good mate has made me a fantastic little birthday card...captures the absurdity of it perfectly



Ant

[epoch911]

I noticed also in The Sunday Times that even former Stig, Ben Collins, shares the love...



Words like RAW and FRIGHTENING sum it up perfectly!


Er...LETHAL?!

[hot66]

always reassuring when professional & talented racing drivers label a car as 'lethal'

just the sound of it on tick over is enough to make me want one . Like the factory fit rally spec woollie hat

[epoch911]

I'm not sure if anyone is actually reading this anymore but I'll keep going (on and on)

Importing a vehicle into the UK is, on paper, pretty straightforward.
Fill out online an HMRC NOVA application.
They tell you if you have to pay tax or import duty (which you don't with an old car from within the EU )

Take that HMRC authorisation to the DVLA and fill out a V55/5.
With a car over 10 years old, you can ignore all of the Certificate of Conformity, IVA and Mutual recognition bollix.

Enclose the original European registration documents, MOT, insurance (done against the VIN number as you don't have a numberplate) and payments and 2 weeks later you get your UK age related registration.

Take the DVLA authorisation to your local Halfords and get the plates made up

It was slightly more hassle than that to be honest when the DVLA approved my application, gave me the number plate and authorisation and, IN THE SAME LETTER, rejected my application and returned all my documents with the reg number I'd been given Tippexed out. Apparently I'd not enclosed enough money for the 12 months tax. Which I had. Their mistake but to be fair, they got onto it pretty quickly and my new registration arrived a few days later.

So goodbye DD 9212 GK (now a nice memento for the garage wall)
Hello A 188 WHK

[Ferry Man]

I love Stefan's sketch. That is superb!

[cubist]

still reading...

[epoch911]

I opted to have the car delivered straight to John Price Rally near Hereford as I was keen to get on with any work that might be needed - and I actually haven't got a garage at the moment to keep it in anyway!

I used Cars Europe who offered a fantastic service - I opted for a shared covered transporter which meant I had to wait a couple of weeks until they had a lorry going near Dresden but it saved me a lot of dosh... I'd definitely recommend them if you want to move cars around.
http://www.carseurope.net/

For those who don't know John Price, there's a bit of history here:

http://www.johnpricerallying.com/history


He and his son Steve are top blokes...absolutely grass roots motorsport enthusiasts and experts - both softly spoken Welshmen operating from a small workshop in mid Wales. But put them behind the wheel and all hell breaks loose. John is in his 70's now but that doesn't appear to have slowed him down - or his wife who navigates for him on rallies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fPsiEI0eeo

And his 6R4 is quite a sight...



to think it's the same engine in the Jaguar XJ220. 11,000 RPM. 500 bhp. I don't think it's possible to look at the car and not feel a stirring of the blood. Engine porn at its finest.

So I booked a day off and headed up there to talk through the work that would be needed. I wondered whether they might have done all the work already (they had received the car a couple of days previously after all) as it was bound to be just a few niggles and tweaks...