Since the release of its 2-litre GSi, the Opel (read Vauxhall) Kadett GSi has pretty much been top dog in South Africa as far as hot hatches are concerned. From the legendary limited edition 125kW 2-litre 16-valve Superboss - with the world's first limited slip diff on a front wheel production car - up to the last of the mega-hot hatches, the 6-speed 160kW turbocharged 200TS, Opel has been one of a handful of manufacturers that has actually catered for the desires of its power-hungry customers... in South Africa at least.
But what's a lot of power to some isn't nearly enough for others...
Dyed-in-the-wool Opel man and owner of tuning outfit NASCAR Motorsport, Nasen Padayachee, has been a stalwart of the Durban (South Africa) tuning and drag racing scene for as long as most can remember, and has cut his teeth building engines for the host of GSi's he has owned and tuned for customers. Having gone as far or rather as fast (232 km/h in 800m and 236 km/h in 1km) as he felt he could with a 2-litre turbocharged Superboss, Nasen learnt a few valuable lessons (or "paid my school fees" as he put it) and felt he was ready to build a small capacity turbocharged engine with enough power and torque to embarrass some of the finest exotica around.
Starting point for this exercise is very unlikely - an Isuzu diesel ute kindly donated its crankshaft for a hopefully bullet-proof bottom-end. The entire motor though is based around a 200TS engine, with the aluminium pistons from the TS hooked to the crank via forged steel rods from Carrillo which in turn are held together by ARP rod bolts. The TS bore and Isuzu stroke multiply to a swept volume a few CC's short of 2.2 litres.
With the sub-assembly sorted, it was time for the head to get its fair share of attention. A flowed head and humungous inlet and exhaust valves from an M3 - actuated by Cosworth profile BD 14 camshafts - don't hinder the pressurized charge on its way into the combustion chamber, where it meets spark provided by an MSD 6AL ignition unit. Cam timing is variable thanks to set of vernier gears. The head is then firmly bolted down by means of ARP forged studs.
Onto the head is bolted a custom intake manifold. Custom because it has to mate up to a set of 53mm throttle bodies, one per cylinder, also sourced from the M3.Custom also because this motor has enough injectors for an eight cylinder, yep that's two per cylinder with almost 1100cc per cylinder being provided under extreme throttle positions. This lot is kept under firm control by a Dastek UNICHIP programmable ECU unit, which allows for 'on-the-fly' tuning by means of a laptop computer. This ECU has the capability to control the fuel and ignition map as well as boost levels with the help of a boost control valve, which Nasen plans to install to help deal with the prodigious amounts of wheel-spin. The two fuel rails are kept full by two fuel pumps.
The throttles are fed its dose of pressurized air after it has passed through first a front-mounted intercooler, with Audi RS Avant core and custom tanks, and then an engine-mounted charge cooler with its radiator placed snugly between the intercooler and radiator. Yep - two series intercoolers! These two heater exchangers are in turn fed from the hybrid Garrett T04E blower with roller bearings for optimal spool-up characteristics. To ensure things don't get a little too hectic when you're either on or off the loud pedal, an external wastegate and an HKS sequential pop-off valve are present. The turbo expels all waste out a 80mm drain-pipe - masquerading as an exhaust - specially fabricated by Powerflow Exhausts of Pinetown.
So what's all this lot worth you're wondering? Well as is usual with turbocharged engines, power output depends on the boost level. So at a sensible1.3 Bar above ambient, this little powerhouse makes an incredible 320kW at the front wheels - and probably a bit more as Nasen recalls of the dyno run, "I had to back off because she was starting to smoke the wheels on the rollers, and it nearly shredded a set of track slicks." On competition days the boost is taken up only slightly to 1.4 Bar. On its last two outings, the car clocked up a stonking 251km/h and - after a rather troublesome day - a 240km/h after 800m. It can also do a 12.9 sec quarter mile - not too shabby for a front wheel drive that's geared for top-end running! And the scariest thing is that the inlet is also fitted with an NOS nitrous fogger for an extra 50hp, just in case. But last time the NOS was used with the boost turned down, the car actually went slightly slower than it did with only the turbo on duty, a testament, I suppose, to the efficiency of the combined effect of the turbo and twin intercooler set-up.
With so much of 'go' power, the 'whoa' power needed to be addressed as well with a set of Porsche 911 vented and grooved discs finding home between the stock calipers. Suspension-wise, a set of 40mm lowering springs from Bilstein are found at each corner behind Superboss 15-inch 5-spokes on Bridgestone RE 710 of the 195/50 variety. And because the car was a ground-up rebuild, Nasen had the good sense to send the entire body for seam welding, which no doubt helps enormously to cope with the huge level of torque this motor puts out, as well as aid in the handling stakes.
Transmission is an almost stock 200TS 6-speed unit, with strengthened spider gears and the original LSD. At 39.3 km/h per 1000 rpm, the gearbox has what is usually considered a reasonably tall top gear - but it's not considered that on this car. Why? Because the Opel easily sees 7000 on the tach - and not only does it see these speeds, but it does so almost within the 1km mark!
The exterior is covered liberally in a pearl silver metallic finish, decorated by the logos of technical sponsors and those of NASCAR Motorsport. And at the pointy end, a set of Carello double round headlights really sets this Kadett apart from the thousands of others in South Africa. Interior safety comes in the shape of a pair Razor sports buckets. And engine safety is also under a watchful eye with the monitoring of boost levels, air-fuel ratio and exhaust temperatures by dashboard-mounted gauges. There is little in the way of creature comforts such as a CD player, the factory Opel dashboard rattles and regular chirping of the wastegate keeps driver and passenger well entertained. I had a quick - in both senses of the word - stint at the wheel and was impressed at the lack of lag, with the boost coming in at roughly the three thousand rpm mark, common to most aftermarket turbo conversions - especially at this kind of power output.
I unfortunately drove the car on public roads which meant I wasn't prepared to go much higher than double the speed limit... It's truly alarming the rate at which the little hatch gets there! The fastest front-wheel drive in the whole of Africa? Probably. And to back up this claim, Nasen will be taking a crack at the national record at this year's South African Fastest Street Car Challenge. My brief time at the wheel had me lifting off just to hear that external wastegate whistle, a sound I could definitely live with on a daily basis.
Hmmmm..... now where is that piggy bank of mine?
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Just What the Hell is a Superboss?
Opel first dipped their toes into the South African hot hatch market way back in 1984, with a limited run of GTE's. Based on the Series I Kadett, this vehicle was powered by an 85kW, 1.8-litre fuel injected motor. However it wasn't until the release of the Series II Kadett a year later that Opel really opened the floodgates on a barrage of hat-hatches that were to challenge the likes of Toyota and the benchmark VW GTi. 'GSi' was to become the nomenclature of the most athletic hatches in the range. The first to carry this badge was a GSi 1.8 sharing the motor previously found in the GTE. This was the range-topper until 1987, when it was replaced by the "Boss", a title bestowed upon it by the marketing division of Opel. This 2-litre 8-valve 95kW hatch was making serious in-roads into the domination of the VW GTi range, but it wasn't until '89 with the arrival of the 115kW 2-litre 16-valve "Big Boss" that Opel truly became the hottest of the hatches. Not happy with simply being top of the hatch heap, Opel went on to produce the limited edition (just 244 were sold) "Superboss". This pocket rocket produced 125kW from its 2-litre 16-valve powerplant. This phenomenal output came with a little help from a Cosworth head (for the initial cars and GM-cast Cosworth design for the later cars), Schrick camshafts, a Brospeed exhaust and re-mapped ECU. And to put all that power down through the front wheels, a world first for a production front wheel drive - a limited slip differential. Such was the brutal nature of this car that Opel saw need for an advance driver training course for new owners. In essence the Superboss was basically a modified "Big Boss" with its raison d' etre being production car racing homologation. And not only did it just go racing but it gave the overall Group N championship to Mike Briggs three years running, over the much more powerful 155kW, 2.7-litre BMW 325iS. The battle of the hot hatches was drawing to a close, with VW (in the eyes of the fans) going a little soft with its underpowered GTi AIII, but hope soon returned with the release of the VR6. But Opel though felt it had to have the last say and released the Kadett 200 TS. This was an unbelievable 160kW 2-litre turbocharged 6-speed missile based around the Calibra motor, but with front wheel drive only in the Series III Kadett range. This was definitely the last say as far as hot hatches were concerned...
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