MY WEEK IN CARS
Steve Cropley
Cropley wants to recreate the fun he had in our 309 racer
MONDAY
Last week’s motorsport fun (I ran Autocar’s electric Renault 5 in a Cornwall sprint) sent me into one of those urgent moods of car desire that stay with you after you’ve had a really good time.
Sprints and hillclimbs suit me and my sons, and over 30 years we’ve had about a dozen cars, but the best fun by far was a nicely set-up Peugeot 309 GTi that started as an Autocar project car bought on eBay for £250. Naturally, after I got home last weekend, I started scrabbling about for 309s, remembering that steering, that gearbox, that exhaust note and that all-pervading enjoyment. Short answer? There aren’t any. Not at under £10,000, at least. And that’s before you consider the mods we would need: cage, seats, harnesses, suspension alterations, proper tyres and brakes and a Quaife low-ratio limited-slip differential, which made our 130bhp feel more like 150-160bhp, even if it limited our top speed, hard up against the 7000rpm rev limiter, to 106mph (as measured on Autocar’s timing gear). The good news is that Peugeot 205s are a bit more plentiful; the bad news (for bank manager and Steering Committee) is that I’ve got an urgent taste for building a motorsport hobby car again.