Drove my Plus up to Bruntingthorpe proving grounds today to meet Autocar for the photoshoot in a feature they are planning for the 7th or 10th February 2010 - Unconfirmed as yet
Day started at 7:30 am - with a drive up to Leicester. Once there (9:20 am) I had the chance to meet the other guy's in the shoot. The cars present were .....
2000 - Fiat Coupe 20VT Plus (modded with custom cat-back)
2005 - Renault Clio 180 RenaultSport (modded with sport cat and custom stainless)
1999 - Peugeot 306 'Rallye' (Standard)
1998 - Honda Integra Type R (Standard)
Started with a sit down and a chat about the cars with the article writer (a girl called Vicky, "what a girl?" I hear you cry - she knew her stuff!), then a chat about how the day would run and the positioning for the cars for the various shoots to be held - drawn by hand
The shoots were...
- Rolling 4's
- Rolling 2's (Fiat & Integra)
- Test driver by article writer
- Fast speed cornering shot
- Best interior for interior driving shot - (guess who won
- Static interior, engine and body
- Static mug shot by car
- End of day chat and finish
Best part of the day? At the end, we needed to head back from one end of the runway to the exit - the other end. Somehow it was decided that we should have a drag race (ala top gear). We lined up, Stu the photographer gives us the 1,2,3 ... and we went. Of course the coupe won by a huge margin ..... losers
and if I had my Steely it would have been by even further
Got to say that most of the day we were standing around doing nothing but talking amongst ourselves, but they were a great bunch, so the day flew by really! We also took it upon ourselves to park the cars (while not being tested/used) to park them under a 747 that happened to be there! (Photo's below)
End of the day, Autocar filled our cars up with fuel and off we went.
We end up with a free copy of the mag and a copy of the photographs (this is the interesting bit to me)
All shots taken by me - not the photo guy. Hence why the coupe is the man focus is most Last one - Is this the ugliest plane in the world?