9:15 am, September 9, 2010
Project Stealth has begun – it’s our operation to turn a boring Honda Civic into an SR71 Blackbird for Bangers4BEN 3. We’ve dispatched commercial manager Duncan Chappell and worky James Batchelor to Scotland to get our car sorted. Here’s James’ account of day one…
SO far on Project Stealth, Duncan and I have been awake for 20 hours, tried a new delicacy, and broken every one of our hotel’s rules. But it’s not all bad news.
The important part of our trip is a shake-down of the car for the 1,600-mile adventure James and Dunc will be tackling on Sunday, so how has the Civic performed so far?
Amazingly well, in fact. The 1997 1.4-litre Honda in lurid turquiose (I actually quite like the colour) hasn’t missed a beat on our 400-mile odd journey from Gosport to a little place just outside of Edinburgh.
Duncan did suffer a little (quite a lot actually) from back-ache as the driver’s seat has seen 13 years and 115,000 miles of backsides – and we have quickly started to miss such modern comforts such as cup-holders, cubby holes, lumbar support and headlamps that actually light the road to an adequate degree.
But considering this car – sourced from Auction4Cars.com – only cost £250 (and came with alloy wheels and a fully-working electric sunshine roof), it is actually quite impressive.
But, my word, it handles weirdly. Tackling the A701 – which twists and crests around some of the most gorgeous Border country scenery – revealed the Civic has no suspension at all.
Sure it handles bumps fairly comfortably but, show it a corner, and it keeps on rolling with no resistance at all. But keep that in mind and use max revs, the 1.4 Civic was quite fun it must be said.
THE WRAP
At around 3pm yesterday (after a 5am start) we arrived at Mark’s garage which is home to his impressive CarWrapz business.
After some filming and general chit chat, Mark and his team (Jess and Aimee) set about transforming the Civic into Project Stealth – our matt black monster.
Turns out wrapping isn’t the quickest of tasks, so we took a break to enjoy the local delicacy – deep fried pizza (I kid you not, proof on the right there) – then returned to Mark for some more wrapping.
At 10pm we called it a wrap (sorry), but if you want a resume of the process, I couldn’t do it justice. So you’ll have to wait to see the pictures later this week.
When we eventually got to our hotel, we were late and a strange man let us in who grumbled a lot.In the morning we came down for breakfast late (annoying the hotel’s owner again), didn’t vacate our room by 10am (this time annoying the manager and cleaner) and forgot to hand the key back – again the manager wasn’t best pleased.
Our excuse? We were tired.
Anyway, today we’re applying stickers then heading south again to Pentagon London – the window tinters for part two of Project Stealth.
Wish me, and Dunc’s back, luck…
by James Batchelor
