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  • PANDEM 335i E93: VISION AND EXECUTION

    Idea, vision and execution. The most overlooked part of many builds and it doesn’t even cost a thing… not in the case of this Pandem 335i E93, though.

    Feature first appeared in Fast Car magazine. Words and Photos: Paddy McGrath

    It has become such a regular occurrence, that I sometimes think we either don’t notice it any more or purposely choose to overlook it.

    I’m talking about cars which suffer with an identity crisis, cars which don’t really know what they’re trying to be. Show cars pretending to be track cars, or track cars built to such a high standard that their owners are frightened to take them out on track. Often this comes about due to improper planning and foresight; when we don’t look far enough down the road to try and see what we really want to build for ourselves.

    Pandem 335i E93

    What normally happens is that we start out excited and eager to put our mark on a new project. Our intentions are always good, but somewhere along the way we get distracted. Sometimes, we do things because we just fancy a change. Other times, we’re sold on a new product that while it doesn’t actually suit our own builds we just want that endorphin kick from buying new parts. I think we would struggle to find anyone who hasn’t been guilty of this at some stage, present company included.

    None of this is particularly bad in the grand scale of things, but it’s a defining factor in what separates a good build from a great one. That ability to know from the very start what the long term plan is, and to stick with it religiously until it’s achieved. It takes discipline, for sure, including a lot of self restraint to ensure that you don’t veer off course. Knowing when to stop, is another underrated skill.

    Pandem 335i E93

    BMW 335i E93: The Journey

    I don’t think any of this is a problem that Darren Coleman has ever had. He’s a man with a history of great builds behind him, and always knows exactly what he wants to achieve, often before he has even taken ownership of his next project.

    BMW’s E93 3-Series convertible might not be the obvious choice in a model range which offers every variant you could ever want; be it coupe, convertible, saloon or estate. It was however the perfect base for what Darren had in mind. For him, he gets his car joy not just from attending and displaying at shows, but the road trip there with friends and family. It doesn’t matter if it’s a show in his home country in Ireland, or if he as to take a ferry across to the UK, half the fun is the
    drive there.

    Pandem 335i E93

    Ultimately, this was a car that couldn’t just look the part, but it had to be fun to drive along with being usable on long journeys. Further to all of this, it had to be uniquely Darren’s as well. It’s a pretty long list of requirements, which only served to sharpen his focus.

    Your first thought might be that this BMW has a heavy JDM influence, and you would be correct. Darren’s previous project was a Toyota Supra, and he’s surrounded by the Japanese cars of his friends and family. By integrating Japanese touches onto a German car, he has already taken this build in a different direction to most.

    To best appreciate this car, I think we should start from the ground up with the 19-inch WORK VSXX which measure in at 14.5-inches at the rear, and 12.5-inches up front. The satin black centres with gloss lips almost disguise their incredible width. Almost. Still, I wouldn’t exactly call them subtle.

    Pandem 335i E93

    There would be zero hope of fitting these under factory bodywork, so Japanese legend Kei Miura (AKA Mr. Rocket Bunny) was called in to supply his full Pandem kit. This kit features exaggerated box-arches, which perfectly complement the E93’s factory lines, as opposed to the more typical rounded arch extensions. To add further aggression to the exterior, an M3 bonnet and rear bumper have been used. The paint, is a custom shade of blue.

    Even with the right wheels and bodywork in place, ride height is key to pulling these elements together. As someone who wants to regularly drive his car to obscure places, a static setup would never have worked. Never mind the poor roads around these parts, but best of luck trying to crab your way onto a ferry at low-tide without removing your entire bodykit beforehand.

    Thankfully, it’s 2020 (words I don’t believe anyone has written so far this year) and we have been blessed with companies like Air Lift Performance, who will allow you to have your cake and eat it, too. In other words, an air suspension system which offers the perfect static height for shows, a usable driving height for getting there and even the option to raise the car further to clear obstacles or board a ferry, all at the press of a button. What a time to be alive.

    On the subject of driving, you might have noticed this isn’t an M3. There’s a good reason for that, which I’ll explain elsewhere, but this Pandem 335i E93 isn’t lacking in power. Some mild upgrades see the 3.0-litre twin-turbo motor produce 450hp, including the subtle addition of twin-HKS mushroom filters. Most impressive is that this car was originally automatic, but has been converted to a six-speed manual.

    Inside Job

    Inside, things remain deceptively subtle. The standard BMW front seats have been swapped for a pair of lower Recaro seats, sourced from a Honda and appropriately re-trimmed to match the interior. There’s a Nardi steering wheel, some custom carbon fibre trim and a not-so-subtle yellow half-cage.

    This last piece is purely functional, and not a ‘show cage’. Otherwise, the first thing to meet the road in case of a rollover with the roof down, would be the top of Darren’s head. Let’s be honest, that doesn’t sound like a good time.

    It’s not a huge spec list, but it’s a perfect example that more isn’t always better. The car features absolutely everything it needs to make it special, and not a nut or bolt more. It’s a car which is as comfortable aired out centre stage at any show, as it is on a Sunday drive.

    While I’m sure that there are BMW enthusiasts who are thinking it’s sacrilege to go down the JDM route, and Japanese car fans who are probably thinking why didn’t he just start with a Japanese car in the first place, I think that bringing these two worlds together has produced a much more interesting result. It’s not the first time this has been done, but it’s something I hope we see more of in the future.

    Above all else, it’s a car which is the result of having a vision. I’m certain that before Darren even drove the car for the first time, he knew that at some stage it would look exactly like this. It didn’t happen overnight – it took him a couple of years – but by plugging away at it, and resisting the temptation to veer off course, he has produced something truly memorable with his Pandem 335i E93.

    Pandem 335i E93

    Tech Spec: Pandem 335i E93

    Styling:

    Custom blue paint work, full original Pandem wide-body kit, M3 bonnet, M3 rear bumper, Pandem rear spoiler.

    Tuning:

    N54 3.0-litre twin-turbocharged inline-six, six-speed manual gearbox conversion, HKS intercooler with custom pipework, cat-less downpipes, custom exhaust system, R8 coilpacks with custom made loom, colour coded engine covers, HKS air filters, custom engine mapping by MHD, 450hp.

    Chassis:

    19×12.5-inch (front) and 19×14.5-inch (rear) WORK VSXX, Air Lift Performance suspension with 3P management, K Sport 8-piston (front) and 6-piston (rear) brakes

    Interior:

    Custom re-trimmed Recaro front seats, Nardi steering wheel, custom carbon fibre interior trim, custom half-cage, fire extinguisher.

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  • Dodge almost made an off-road version of the Caravan

    SUVs have decimated minivan sales in part because of their rugged appearance and the promise of off-road capability, but what if you could imbue a minivan with those same qualities? It almost happened with the Dodge Caravan in the 1990s.

    First spotted by The Drive, this Dodge Caravan off-road concept was penned by Michael Santoro, who had just finished working on the Dodge Stratus and Chrysler Cirrus “cloud car” sedans at the time. Santoro would go on to work for doomed supercar maker Vector, and help hatch the Jeep Easter egg, but in the mid 1990s he was a minivan specialist.

    “One of the best parts about being in a studio that designs the best selling vehicle a company makes is, there is always interest from upper management in spin-offs and line extensions,” Santoro said of the off-road minivan’s genesis on his personal website.

    Dodge Caravan off-road concept (via Michael Santoro)

    Dodge Caravan off-road concept (via Michael Santoro)

    Tasked with creating a new Caravan variant “without spending any money,” Santoro added grille bars, side steps, a light bar, a roof rack, and blacked-out B-pillars. The design progressed far enough for a prototype to be built and shown to dealers.

    While Dodge dealers loved the concept, Jeep dealers didn’t. They were afraid a production version of the off-road minivan would cannibalize sales, Santoro said.

    Regardless, the prototype was “a step away” from debuting at the Chicago Auto Show, but “the plug was pulled at the last moment,” Santoro said. Adding off-road styling cues has helped boost the sales of other types of vehicles—just look at the Subaru Outback and Audi Allroad wagons—but could it have worked with a minivan? It seems we’ll never know.

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  • TOP 10 WAYS TO MAKE YOUR CAR LIGHTER

    With newer cars getting bigger and heavier each year, we list the top 10 ways to make your car lighter and faster for any budget. 

    No, don’t worry, we’re not about to suggest attending the local zumba class to, ahem, shake your booty like a Polaroid picture. What we’re really interested in here is finding that perfect weight-loss programme for your pride and joy. And, why’s that? Well, arguably it’s the easiest way to improve performance and handling.

    Yep, when you think about it, shedding pounds could be even more important than tuning itself. In the real world it’s exactly the same as gaining horsepower… and God knows we’ve all spent plenty of cash over the years trying to gain a little extra grunt, right?

    So, that’s why this month we’ve mostly been thinking about fighting that flab and freeing up some healthy, usable power. You can get the obligatory Xmas pigging out of the way first of course, we’re not total monsters. But, when you’ve sung the last words of Old Lang Syne, here’s some tips to get you fighting fit for 2020…

    Power to weight – why do I want to make my car lighter?

    Power to weight ratios are everything in the pursuit of ultimate performance. They’re the reason you don’t see many race cars with 15-subs in the boot, and why a nuclear-powered oil tanker with 60000bhp will still be beaten off the line by my nan on her mobility scooter.

    When you’re looking at weight vs power think about this: If you’ve got a car that weighs 2000kg with 200bhp, that’s a ratio of 2000:200 or 10:1. This also means every single horsepower has to push along 10kg. If you can save 200kg in mass, the ratio becomes 9:1 – a 10-percent increase in acceleration and real-world power.

    In braking terms, a small, light car has less mass to slow down and will often be able to out-brake a much larger cruiser with significantly bigger brakes. Handling will also be improved because there’s less weight for the suspension and tyres to control. And, if you’re clever, you can also influence balance, tweaking oversteer and understeer according to where you take the weight from. With less weight your car will be more reliable due to less stress on components, you’ll enhance that magical driver ‘feel’ and you’ll get more MPG too.

    Top 10 ways to make your car lighter

    1) Need it? No, then shift it!

    The easiest, not to mention cheapest, way of saving weight is the most obvious – stripping out all the old guff that you don’t need. The thing to think about is how far you want to go, especially if you want to keep your car usable on the road.

    Obviously the most hardcore dieting regimes, chiefly the ones where you’re looking to ditch all the trim, cut away excess metal and scrape away any sound deadening, will always yield the most impressive gains. On plenty of cars just removing the carpet can save a good few kilos for starters.

    Of course, no one’s forcing you to go mad, something as simple as clearing out all the old tools and rubbish knocking around your boot can save more weight than you might think. It’s also worth knowing that the full-size spare steelies on some of the more retro Jap motors can weigh up to 15kg, while a can of Tyreweld weighs next to nothing. There’s two reasons why new cars don’t come with full-size spares nowadays – performance and economy.

    Weight loss: From a few kg to a lot!
    Cost: £mostly free

    Top 10 ways to make your car lighter

    2) Get some bucket seats

    Standard seats weigh an absolute ton especially those big electric, heated jobs you get in the luxury VIP cruisers. In fact, many modders in the US and Japan strip their seats of all the electric motors and fit manual sliders in a bid to shed a few pounds.

    The average car seat can weigh 16-25kg so the best solution will always be fitting some lightweight aftermarket buckets. These are available in both reinforced fibreglass and posh composites like Kevlar and carbon fibre. Some aftermarket seats can weigh as little as 4kg and, even with the added subframes, that’s a significant drop in weight – especially if you only need the one.

    When you’re making your choice don’t forget to consider that leather generally weighs more than cloth too, just try to pick up a cow sometime…

    Weight loss: up to 25KG per seat
    Cost: from £165
    Start looking: cobra-seats.com

    Top 10 ways to make your car lighter

    3) Remember that not all rims are equal

    Steel wheels, along with the larger sized alloys, can weigh anything up to 20kg a corner with the tyres on, and that’s what’s scientifically know as ‘a lot’. Even an average set of 18-inch alloys can weigh over 12kg a corner. So, do your research and be careful of what aftermarket alloys you choose. The design, construction and materials used can have a huge impact on the overall weight. Problems are always compounded with wheels too, because when they’re rotating, this magnifies the effect of the mass. Some experts say that this can be up to 10-times the original weight and, again, that’s quite a bit of heft pulling your car around.

    Obviously budget is always a consideration here, but forged rims, along with rotary forged (flow formed) wheels will always be the ultimate in lightness over more common cast wheels. OK actually, the ultimate would be full-on carbon fibre wheels, but who’s got the cash lying around to pay 4-grand-plus per corner? We’ll just have to wait for those six little numbers to come in!

    Weight loss: up to 45kg (4 wheels)
    Cost: from £650 (set)
    Start Looking: srbpower.com

    Top 10 ways to make your car lighter

    4) Plastic is pretty fantastic

    Due to its complex chemical makeup, glass is a particularly heavy material – handy for seeing through when you’re driving, but heavy none the less. In fact, the glass in an average hatchback can come in at up to 50kg, and that’s why race cars use polycarbonate windows which weigh up to 60-percent less, are super-strong and are pretty much shatter proof. It’s not common with the Jap stuff of course, but in the wider motoring world, a few production cars run polycarbonate here and there. It’s not just the performance specials either, the first to do this was the Smart Fourtwo, and that was way back in 1998.

    Anyway, the switch to polycarbonate windows also helps lower the centre of gravity for a bonus improvement in handling, they’re also relatively cheap compared to many performance mods out there.

    Everything from replacement windscreens to quarter lights are on the market and with side windows you can often specify race-car style vents and sliders. And,  while you’re at it, take a look at your sunroof – you won’t believe how weighty the glass and mechanism can be there, luckily plenty of these can be replaced too.

    Weight loss: up to 25kg
    Cost: From £80
    Start looking: acwmotorsportplastics.co.uk

    5) Sort your chassis

    You know in The Fast and The Furious when they’re designing that orange Supra and saying using aftermarket suspension can save 10-pounds (4.5kg) a corner? Well they were right. In fact, with the advancements in technology, the savings nowadays can be significantly more, in some cases over 10kg can be saved just by switching to a set of coilovers.

    It doesn’t stop at shocks and springs either, there are loads of other chassis parts that can shave off a few kgs, sometimes a whole lot more. Lightweight adjustable control arms are also a popular choice, especially those super-hardcore alloy jobs you find on many a Honda, simply because they also do a great job of helping you set up your chassis geometry.

    When it comes to your brakes, you may think that big brake conversions will always weigh a whole lot more than standard, but plenty of times that’s just not the case. Nowadays plenty of the top end items will offer quite the saving. Multi-pot alloy brake calipers and discs with alloy bells can weigh a lot less than standard cast iron jobs, and obviously, they’ll work much more effectively too.

    Weight loss: up to 40kg
    Cost: From £150
    Start Looking: bc-racing.co.uk, ksport.co.uk, bilstein.de

    6) Get the body you’ve always dreamed of

    Lightweight panels, particularly fibreglass replacements, have been a racing staple for decades now. In the more hardcore fraternities it’s pretty common to totally replace front ends, or even the whole body, swapping out all the steel panels over a custom-fabricated, lightweight, tubular chassis.

    Of course, we also now have the wonders that are carbon fibre and Kevlar, and everything from bonnets and tailgates, to front wings, bumpers and even complete floor pans are on offer. The best thing is that prices are coming down all the time too.

    That said, always be aware of what you’re buying and, if possible, check the weight first. Some cheaper parts are reinforced with steel structures or seriously thick fibreglass underneath, and that can actually be heavier than the standard part altogether. Be especially mindful of this on cars like Subarus which often come with lightweight aluminium bonnets in the first place. You don’t want to make your car heavier, do you? That’s just defeating the object.

    Weight loss: up to 25kg
    Cost: F Weight loss – anything up to a ton, maybe more!
    Cost from £30
    Start Looking: tarmacsportz.co.uk

    7) Remember it all adds up

    When it comes to standard parts, most are made to a budget, so there’s plenty of areas where shaving off a few grams here and there can add up. Take your standard exhaust manifold, it’s most likely cast iron, a stainless steel tubular replacement will not only save a few kilos, but will improve the gasflow for more power too.

    It can be a modification as small as a lightweight pulley set or racing steering wheel. Then again, it could be as bonkers as a carbon propshaft, aluminium diff or lightweight gearbox housing – it all makes a difference. We’ve even heard of people emptying their washer bottles and keeping their fuel to a minimum on a trackday. It may sound crazy but it makes sense – 3 litres of washer water weighs 3kg while 40-litres of petrol nearly 30kg.

    Of course if you’re looking for the ultimate in lightweight bolt-on performance you could bag yourself a full-on titanium exhaust. Titanium is comparable to steel in strength but has less than half the overall weight. It also looks pretty damn tasty too!

    Weight loss: 200grams to 20kg
    Cost: from £50
    Start Looking: scorpoion-exhausts.co.uk

    Top 10 ways to make your car lighter

    8) Get the right electricals

    Obviously most of us aren’t looking to go that far on a road car, but there are plenty of other easier options. Take your car battery for example. Normal lead-acid items are really, really heavy, but these can easily be replaced with more lightweight units, perhaps even a super-compact racing item if you’re not running too many electrical systems.

    Then there’s the audio. If you like to hear your music properly I’ve always been an advocate of a sound system with a dedicated woofer. But, it’s always worth thinking about the gear you’re fitting – do you really need that 18-inch woofer and 4000Watt amp outside of an SPL competition?

    Some manufacturers have made a massive impact with lightweight audio over the past few years, and nowadays you can get some serious performance and exceptional sound quality out of tiny subs and even tinier amplifiers. Of course there’s also the age-old option of ripping out the standard system altogether, or fitting a compact Bluetooth receiver instead of a headunit. It all works.

    Cost: from £free
    Start Looking: jlaudio.co.uk

    Top 10 ways to make your car lighter

    9) Step away from the fast food!

    Let’s just say that one of the heaviest things in your motor is you. In other words, it’s no use trying to shave 20g off the wiring harness and immediately reaching for that second cheeseburger – take this from a rather portly, salad-dodger who knows!

    If you already look like you’ve been on the cover of Men’s Health then well done you, but the rest of us will probably admit we could all do with being a little fitter. So, maybe getting your laptimes down a bit could be your motivation to dodge a future heart attack? Then again, maybe life’s just too short for eating steamed cabbage anyway!

    Cost: Free

    10)  Don’t put it back on again!

    You have to feel a little sorry for all those F1 engineers. These guys spend all year trying to shave half a gram off a brake caliper, then Lewis Hamilton turns up with a nose ring that probably weights five times that. My point is to be mindful of what you’re putting back in your car – there’s pros and cons for almost everything.

    A roll-cage can add a significant amount of weight but it can also save your life in a smash. Then again, with the rigidity and safety a cage provides, it’s possible to remove a whole lot more metal from the car – along with things like side impact bars.

    Think of it like this, cages always look great but racecars have to have them because of the safety regulations, some drivers would happily do without them just to get the performance edge. I know it’s a random one, but in 1952 NASCAR driver Tim Flock was disqualified from a race for having a cage made from painted wood – how’s that for a serious set of spuds, eh?

    As with any other modification, it’s all about balance, so make sure you thoroughly (excuse the pun) weigh-up your options before you start pulling stuff apart.

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