Friday 4th September 2015

Shed Of The Week: Citroen Saxo VTR

A sprightly Saxo with a difference tickles Shed's fancy this Friday

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The Shed is a natural race car. At under a grand, who cares what happens to it? That lack of worth is a positive advantage when you're battling for track space with some wedged-up dude sawing at the wheel of a KTM X-Bow or equally expensive motoring trinket.

Hang on, this looks quite low...

As long as he's spent some money on the brakes, the Shed racer can spend all day winding up his minted fellow competitors by blocking them on the entry to corners and then wallowing queasily through those corners, thus providing them with clear visual evidence of you not having spent a red cent on the chassis.

Obviously, you won't have bought any additional power either, so they'll come screaming past you on the straights, especially when you deliberately tap off and start texting to make them look silly. The beauty is that they'll have to come back around eventually, and that's where your fun starts all over again.

With this sporting Corinthian attitude in mind, we commend to you this Saxo VTR. Enough power to have fun, but not enough to get you into trouble; stripped out to replicate that deafening tinny roar you've heard and loved on BTCC telly programmes; and legally capable of being driven to circuits, if not necessarily away from them afterwards.

... ah, that'll be the 'racing suspension' then

That OMP bucket seat looks the part, and is worth a couple of hundred on its own. Its fixed position might disqualify buyers of non-average dimensions or those without welding skills, but on the other hand the continued presence of the passenger seat suggests the possibility of paid-for 'thrill rides' for your mates or indeed any other people you may hate. Why, it's even got a handy waterproof cover on it.

Lightening the 920kg, 100hp VTR through the removal of most of the rest of the interior should surely have elevated its real-world performance up to something closer to that of the 16-valve 120hp VTS. Lob a new manifold, decat exhaust and enclosed induction filter on it and you could soon be feeling the rude thrust of more than 130hp. That new mani will sort any leaking that the standard one is prone to, and the standard exhausts are notoriously rubbish too, so you can put all this work under the heading of proactive maintenance.

'My first track car' extends inside too!

What can go wrong? What, on a track day do you mean? Well, life-threatening injuries apart, not that much. The VTR motor is a forgiving sort of lump that will resignedly dish out its power to the most leadfooted clod with little complaint. The cambelt only needs replacing every 80K or so.

The gearbox will be less tolerant of the hamfisted, but the illuminated engine management light mentioned in the ad must surely be seen as nothing more than an encouragement to ever-greater feats of derring-do on the merry olde tracks of Englande.

On the chassis side, hot Saxos are famed for the weak rear axles that, for a short while at least, will create some spiffy if random rear-wheel steering attributes. You'd like to think any problems in the beam department would have been addressed when the suspension was dropped. Whatever the vendor's definition of 'racing' suspension may be is left to our own fertile imaginations, but generally speaking lower is always good on the track. Welding in a proper roll cage will bring peace of mind and a new sense of integrity to the flimsy Saxo body.

Light car made even lighter? Marvellous!

Annoyingly the VTR has the well-known Citroën sunshine roof that should be more accurately be known as a raining-in roof. Whip that out and replace it with some high-tech polythene to reduce your racing weight still further. If you regularly plough off the track and into the surrounding fields you should, over time, be able to accumulate enough mud under the rear arches to hide the other brown stuff that will almost certainly be growing there.

This looks like a barrel of cheap fun to us. Try not to crash it until you've fitted that roll cage though.

Here's the ad.

The car is in good working order with racing suspension and is road legal, it has been stripped out for racing spec, eml is on but does not effect drive, bucket seat is in fixed position, no airbags etc due to racing spec, drivers seat has harness, general wear on car although very few marks, please see photos

[Dale487]

Good shed.

The race belts should stop your head bottoming out on the steering wheel in a crash - which was a problem with both this and the 106, even with an airbag fitted.

Should be fun & plenty quick enough with an extra 35bhp over my old Pug 106 Quicksilver.