Chavtastic

The question is why, why not buy a better car and engine in the first place?

 

The puntos (well at least in MK1 form) were extremely fast. My dads 1.1 55bhp Punto easily outperformed the 1.6 90Bhp Escort. The escort is however much better on the motorway, at 80Mph the Escort is a breaze where as the Punto really struggeled.

I think the Metro/100 was just tpyical BL/ROVER. Keep the car for 20 years but keep adding new styles to make it look like a new car. Who are they trying to fool though? We all the know the Rover 45 is just a 1995 Honda Civic 5 Door with updated styling.

 

The Punto at the time was the cheapest way my dad could buy a 5 door car, with 14,000 miles on the clock and less than two years old and had all the mod cons such as electric windows/central locking. It was cheap to run and was practical enough to use as a van. Of course the back seats did get wrecked. The Escorts big is so large that my dad gets all his equipment and chemicals in the boot.

My dad says out of all the cars he has driven which includes the Mini, Allerego, Escort MK1, Lada Riva, Moriss Morina, Metro 1.0, Cortina, Escort MK7 the Punto was the nicest to drive because of its stupidly low ratio gearbox.

I think thats why Puntos are so popular in big cities like Manchester because so they so quick of the mark (rather like the Mini and Metro) and virtualy none existant in the countryside because they struggle with anything about 60mph.

 

Simple,
Just what some Bimmer 325 owners face as you take him in 30-70 zone, a classic

 

Paul I was reffering to the chap WM was talking about, who put the 2.4 litre diesel engine in the punto, nowt wrong with the punto, but if you want to go faster by a fast car, this chap was obviously one of the Q car brigade.

 

I know in the production cars they the Punto sporting originaly had a 1.6 litre engine but they replaced it with a 1.2 litre, the 1.2 litre was actually faster as it was much better suited to the car. I am amazed a 2.4 litre even managed to fit in the engine bay although it is very big.

 

Ah yes, stupidly low gearing, makes the acceleration almost tolerable - I drive a seicento sporting which is probably even lower geared than the punto, with the sporting being lower geared than the bog standard seicento.

Around town its fine and if I cane it then I expect some people are surprised 'off the line', but on the motorway or anything over 50mph its not very nice. I've had it on the redline in top, an indicated 110, it didn't like it very much and neither did I...damned noise of the engine at about 6k rpm gave me a headache, never mind the wind noise . The thought of crashing the thing is sobering as well.

Anyway, all this talk of a 2.4JTD going into a punto, why not put the Punto GT Turbo engine into a seicento and tune the knackers off it? 150+bhp in an 800kg car would make for a right laugh (as any renault 5 GTT owner will tell you).