Pitcrew MX5

Slick bumpers, retro headlights and vintage racing stripes might have you thinking this is a little English sports car but you couldn’t be more wrong as this car is 100% Japanese engineering greatness.

This car may seem retro but if you take a closer look you’ll find your actually looking at an MX5, but this isn’t your regular hair dresser’s car as Matt Steady shows off his fabulous example of the special Pitcrew edition of the car.

It hasn’t been easy creating the car you see now as Matt has had a long journey getting the car to where it is today. When this car was bought it was more than a little rough around the edges with even the seller advising a full re-spray of the car.

With the car already having had a twin carb conversion and talks of forged pistons as well as high lift cams, the car was starting to become a bit of a risk but a lack of surface rust and those beautiful Pitcrew bumpers won Matt over and so the build began.

When he got the car home he found that the car was exceptionally clean with little rust to be seen. It wasn’t long before Matt was making plans for the car and soon had the car on its way to Deepcar Autobodies to be met by Painter Dave.

Matt had big plans to get the car bodywork back to its former glory whilst adding his own unique touch to the car. He soon had painter Dave putting any bodywork issues right as well as smoothing over the number plate recess, ariel, boot key hole and side reflectors giving the car a smooth look.

The boot lid was then replaced with one without the extra rear brake light just to help finish off the smooth look. The addition of some zoom light covers gave the rear end a more rounded look and after sourcing a cheap style bar added a more classic shape to the Pitcrew.

When it comes to picking a new car colour it’s not a process you want to rush and so Matt took to Photoshop to do a few basic colour mock ups. After some playing around with different colour combo’s he finally settled for mini pepper white with some excellent burgundy stripes giving the car a proper retro feel.

When it came to choosing wheels a lot of people would have kept it classic with classic wheels, wide arches and slammed the car to the ground, but Matt played it differently opting for a great set of 15x8” Rota Shakotans, stayed clear of the arch kits to save the classic look of the car, and went for a standard ride height to keep the dapper English squire look instead of a JDM Drift slag.

With the car painted and sitting pretty on some sweet Rota’s it was time for Matt to turn his attention towards the finer details and like all car enthusiasts spent plenty of late nights on eBay searching for the little touches that make this car something special.

“I wanted some KG works mirrors and dial surrounds, a fantastic double-shotgun St. May exhaust, a lovely chrome fuel filler cap, and some Frogeye indicator repeaters. I also picked up some Land rover indicator covers to replace the existing ones as they were a bit faded. Some Billy Bargains! Dave kindly fitted all those bits whilst he was putting the back together again after the paint, which saved me a good deal of time.”

With the exterior of the car looking exceptional Matt turned his attention to the interior and was soon stripping out the old dash to replace it with a mk2. This move to a more rounded dash was controversial but the roundness of the new dash fits in perfectly with the smooth curvy exterior of the car.

Matt managed to find a great set of cobra seats cheap and although they were in bad condition Painter Dave came up trumps again and soon had his mate Sean re-trimming the seats and as you can see he really went to town on them managing to match them into the colour scheme of the car. With the addition of a great new tunnel and some new kick pads the car was now a luxury place to sit and with new door cards soon following this finished off the luxury look interior.

Performance wise the car was still a bit of a mystery, but after attending a dyno day ran by the MX5 Nutz Matt soon found out that there was plenty of power under the bonnet after it threw out a not too shabby 139bhp.

The resident guru Clive (who ran the dyno day) recommended bringing the car back for a check over and a carb tune-up, and so he did. Clive took one look at the jets and spotted they had been drilled to allow more fuel to be forced into the engine, which is probably why he had been getting less than 20 mpg! This also fitted in with the theory that the engine had been built for racing in a 1.6 Naturally Aspirated class. He soldered up the jets and re-drilled them to a more appropriate size, balanced the carbs and cleaned out the filter (years of gunk!). He warned Matt that he might get slightly less power, but hopefully better fuel economy. Putting it back on the dyno, they were very surprised to find that power had gone up to 145bhp. The dirty filter had probably been suffocating the engine. On the run home Matt managed to get a respectable 30 mpg, so great job Clive. That tuning paid for itself in a few tanks of petrol!

With the car running like a dream there was nothing left to do but drive it and Matt has had many different outings in the pitcrew, which also includes having it as a wedding car. With more work planned for under the bonnet Matt says he’s nowhere near finished with this build but with the car in great shape it’s time to get out and enjoy the car.