Sleepers.............

sevenfourate

Devotee of OCD
Paid Member
Someone mentioned a 'sleeper' car they saw / raced at Santa Pod here in the last few days.

When i was a regular at the Pod - i used to come up against one of these too. This was a MK2 Astra. Dead stock outside [Not even a GTE]. But had a V8 under the hood and was obviously RWD. Although i was close'ish to it - i never once beat it. This thing back then was running high 12's i guess ?

Anyway. A story for you about sleepers.

Yesterday i was installing a huge set of entrance gates we'd made for a major Quay in Great Yarmouth. I'm working away facing a largish road and i hear a car coming upto that- and towards us - from a side road. The car was obviously Turbo charged and sounded like nothing on Earth. A whir of Turbos, the chattering of waste-gates, the cheep of tyres fighting for grip etc. Utterly gorgeous and clearly very powerful: and the way it sounded like it was going through the gears....seriously quick.

I moved myself slightly so i was dead opposite the end of this road and waited for the car to come into view. I was expecting something modern and possibly pretty exotic. What actually appeared was an A registration shit-brown Sierra Estate !

It stopped at the junction a while waiting for passing traffic. Paintwork was very clean, i could see no headrests - they looked like standard 1980's flat as you like seats. Wheels were possibly widened (banded} steelies on the rear. Looked thin standard jobbies at the front. But from the side it would have looked pretty stock. Maybe bar some slight lowering.

He blipped the throttle from the other side of the road. It nearly took me off my feet. Literally !

The traffic then cleared and away he went. I can only describe it as if you had a 200mph car - but geared it to do 100mph. This thing went through the gears and upto 80 (?) mph so quickly it was ridiculous. And completely amazing....

No doubt it was a serious cossie lump under there, but all wrapped up in a brown Sierra estate.

I smiled for a long while after seeing that......
 
Brilliant story, Shuv :smile:

It's funny isn't it, how we see supercars and exotics out on the roads and ,sure, they turn heads, but then something like the above makes an appearance and that genuinely amazes us petrolheads. It's possibly that knowledge that under the bland shell there's a hell of a lot of time, money and work that's gone into it. Anyone (with the money) can go into a showroom and buy a 200mph car, but far fewer can build something to rival that sheer gobsmackingness!
 
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@sevenfourate here's my old sleeper mk3 gsi.

I painted the intercooler black to reduce the 'in yer face' element and upset A LOT of people in this car! Custom fuel cell in the boot, custom pistons, rods, inlet manifold, tubular turbo manifold, pectel ecu on custom loom, Quaife diff and straight cut gearkit....................

But to the untrained eye, it was just a gsi with leather seats and 17" alloys. The fact that it did 174mph (on more than one occasion) surprised so many supercar owners! LolIMG_2435.PNG
 
@sevenfourate here's my old sleeper mk3 gsi.

I painted the intercooler black to reduce the 'in yer face' element and upset A LOT of people in this car! Custom fuel cell in the boot, custom pistons, rods, inlet manifold, tubular turbo manifold, pectel ecu on custom loom, Quaife diff and straight cut gearkit....................

But to the untrained eye, it was just a gsi with leather seats and 17" alloys. The fact that it did 174mph (on more than one occasion) surprised so many supercar owners! LolView attachment 19032


LOVE IT ! Thats fantastic. Bet that was a riot..... I cant begin to imagine the look an peoples faces as you stretched away from their 'status symbols'........
 
LOVE IT ! Thats fantastic. Bet that was a riot..... I cant begin to imagine the look an peoples faces as you stretched away from their 'status symbols'........
On full boost (2bar) I could use all 3 lanes of the m1 under hard acceleration! Torque steer ftw! Lol!

I absolutely monstered a Ferrari 360 in it. Sat level with him all the way up to 150, then foot to the floor and out dragged him!

Alas it was only good at straightline performance really. I bought a 172 cup cc as a daily driver, and that's what brings me to where I am now.
 
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Sounds nice. A guy I used to work with had a Saab 9000 a few years back, was pushing around 500bhp. Looked pretty awful but for entertainment factor it was immense, took me out as a passenger and I was giggling like a kid.
 
My mate had a different encounter with a "sleeper" was cruising at 90mph and a car pulls up next to him and starts waving so he thought he wanted to race so floored it but when he looked in his rear view mirror he saw blue lights flashing. Turns out he wasnt waving because he wanted to race, more like pull over you have been busted.

1 court day and a huge fine later he drives like an old lady.
 
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