PPC Clio Staff Car feature

This Clio is many things to me. The newest, the fastest and the best and worst car I've ever owned. I have only actually owned two cars, the first a 1.2 '94 Clio BeBop in a fetching shade of lilac with rust everywhere you wouldn't want rust to be, but I still loved it. First loves are the greatest and all that.

This new love affair came about last February when I was gifted £2k labelled 'Student Loan' and the BeBop was threatening to vomit it's coolant everywhere and pop it's head gasket, which it did in due course on a rainy estate in some Cornish backwater. An arduous scour of insurance companies made me realise that in order for me to insure an RSi, let alone a 16v, I'd be looking at a diet of toast for at least a year, and I wasn't prepared to sacrifice the Pot Noodles just yet, so RT power it was.

A brief eBay search produced many, but one in particular stood out, a phase 3 in 455 blue with FSH and just 64k on the clock. With twelve hours left I stuck on a bid, not really expecting to win, and promptly fell asleep. Next morning, I opened my emails to find, “You have won this item...” , “What the....?!”, “....'96 Clio RT'”, “Oh-oh...!” And so it was written, I had bought a car unseen a good 300 miles up country. So, the next weekend I found myself half asleep on a train heading north, with a quarter of my newly acquired beans on toast money burning a hole in my pocket. Thankfully, all turned out to be well with the car, the previous owner was a delightful, if slightly clueless, lady who I shook hands with and set off back down south.

Just three days later whilst pottering around town, the car cut out. Turning the key it sounded like there was no compression, bad news. Back on my driveway it was revealed that the cambelt had decided to play matchmaker between the pistons and the valves and shredded itself. The car spent the next four weeks on axle stands in various states of repair whilst Uni work took over. Eventually it was fixed up with some shiny new valves, head gasket and accompanying bolts, treat to vented and drilled 16v discs, Turbines and a -55mm PI suspension kit and it was back in business. It, and me, were embarrassed at Euro Fest in September around Castle Combe, but it behaved itself and I didn't forcefully park it in the tyres at Quarry.

The hankering for power has led me to a complete F7P engine, loom and ECU which at £40 would be rude not to buy. The plan is to strip it, rebuild it to OEM+ spec and bolt it into the RT for a little street sleeper action, whilst learning how it actually turns petrol and fire into tyre smoke and ear-to-ear grins. That's my summer gone then.