There are many different goals for car modification depending on what the owner values most in their car.
For some, it is about having a car that expresses who they are as a driver and a person. For others, it is about enhancing their track day experience. However, for others still, the pursuit of performance is what they prioritise most.
Often, the latter group choose a car that is pretty fast in the first place, and in one case in the early 1990s, the choice was a Vauxhall saloon so fast that Parliament tried and ultimately failed to ban it as a surprisingly fast Q-car.
The car started life as the Opel Omega A, a saloon car that was surprisingly aerodynamic for its time before the company entered a partnership with sports car company Lotus to create a high-performance model.
The engine had twin turbochargers fitted, the ignition was changed to the one used on the Lotus Esprit, as well as a gearbox from a Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, which along with its custom-made Goodyear tyres cave it a top speed of 186mph, making it the world’s fastest saloon up to that point.
This proved to be immediately controversial, with Autocar, in particular, condemning it in a scathing editorial that called for electronic limiters to be fitted to the cars, although this would never happen.
However, two factors would end up harming the car in the long run; it cost £48,000, far higher than all but the most executive saloon cars at the time, and it had built up a reputation as a popular car for joyriders to steal.
Because it was so fast and so unassuming, the Lotus Carlton was a frequent target that was used by burglars as part of ram-raiding attacks on shops, most infamously a series of raids in the West Midlands in 1993.
What made it so shocking was the admission by West Midlands Police that pursuit vehicles such as the Rover 800 could not even get close to the car due to its high speed, leading to an unsuccessful campaign by the Daily Mail and the Association of Chief Police Officers to have it banned.
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