British GT Series: with Lotus Carlton

Phil McCavity

Phil McCavity

184
oooo i thought to myself, i havent done this series yet..... oh i know, i'll use that carlton in my garage

modded it up (655 bhp).... got a new wing and some sexy looking silver mega spoked rims in the used rims shop.... haha, i thought to myself, i'll walk this!!!

its a lovely black color, but my garage says its imperial green metallic (i'm gonna go see the optician tomorrow hehe)

never driven it b4, 1st race: stuck my foot down at the start..... wow loadsa wheel spin in 1st gear (and i put 1.5 lsd on it), still spinning in 2nd, still spinning in 3rd, calmed down in 4th

mmmm handles like a dog, i hate it!!! slides all over the place!! i used the other cars as walls til i got into 1st spot every race

to cut a long story short, i won the 1st 4 races.... then thought i'd let Sharon drive (errr my b spec driver btw)

typical, she came flipping 3rd....

(i redid the race after and won)

DONT BOTHER with this car, its bloody awful hehe!!

Gord
 
go nuts it is a awesome car ive had no problems with it and i have a standard version and a fully modified one and think they are both great
 
Pretty funny that you make this write-up, since I also won this tournament with a Carlton. Besides a Griffith 500 this was the only UK car in my garage back then, and I didn't use this one yet so I tuned it to about 500 hp. I thought it was pretty hard to keep this car under control. Full throttle while still in a turn means instant spin. When driving careful it drives ok. Might be a little slower when turning but I'll catch up with the astons and tvr's on the straight. :dopey:


I don't think the car looks good at all, by far the ugliest Lotus ever made. Even the bathtub look-a-like Elans are much prettier.



I guess you shouldnt have tuned it up to 650 hp, I can imagine the hell you went through with all the wheelspin. With 500 hp the car already was on my nerves constantly feeling like it could spin out any time.
 
Hmmm....I didn't have a decent Brit car yet when I did it so I just took my Jaguar XJR-9 and slapped Sports Tires on it. And nuked it like leftover macaroni and cheese.

tsk tsk I'm a baaaaaaad boy.
 
I used the Carlton too (strange)

I don't remember how extensively I tuned the car, but I don't think I did much to the power. I won without too much trouble.
 
I used the Carlton (with traction control on). I'd put a sports exhaust on it, racing chip, port polish, 1st stage of NA tuning, racing brakes, sports suspension, 1st stage of weight loss and soft tyres. The car was around 450bhp afterwards.

The car handled quite well but off the line it accelerates quite slowly. The opposition was slightly faster than me on the straight but I pulled away in faster corners. Tighter corners you've got that problem again of acceleration so they might overtake you.

In the end I managed to do the championship.
 
smellysocks12
I don't think the car looks good at all, by far the ugliest Lotus ever made. Even the bathtub look-a-like Elans are much prettier.
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i don't think that's fair. Lotus didn't design the car - Vauxhall did. Lotus just redeveloped the engine, running gear and suspension. it carries Lotus badges, but it's a Vauxhall really. so blame them, not Lotus ;)

but FWIW i really like the Carlton. :)
 
Yep, it was originally a Vauxhall/Opel/Holden (all part of the GM Group) design, Lotus just redeveloped the enging, suspension and possibly brakes of the car and added a awesome body kit to it (or GM did)

Top car it is, my dad used to own one (well a standard 2.0 GLi) but he always said the handling of it was ace 👍
 
It's based on a Vauxhall Carlton/Cavalier - a common early 90's Uk vehicle.

Here's a Touring Car version:

btcc9504.jpg
 
it makes a great drift car with stock HP and N2 tires. :) thats all ive used it for. and in my opinion with the right rims, it looks p-i-m-p
 
I love how my carlton handles. I picked up this little gem while looking for a used impreza for the boxer championship in pro hall. A sedan with lotus badges?? I was all over it. I needed a car for the tuning gran prix, and I didn't want to use my M3 and trivialize the whole championship, so I went to look through my garrage. I couldn't keep up with the rufs in my MR2, and I didn't want to use the impreza again because I felt bad about turning it into a rear wheel drive road racer. I didn't want to touch my yellowbird yet , and I wasn't in the mood to keep messing with the suspension tuning on my elise or stratos, along with a big list of other cars that I just didn't feel like messing with at the time.

I decided to go with the carlton, so I got it racing exhaust, brakes, tires, port polish, engine balancing, race chip, all the drivetrain components, and a full suspension. Stage 3 weight and a rigidity refresher, and topped it off with a stage 2 turbo and a small intercooler. It didn't let me give it any NA tune up, which I would have preferred. Either way, it turns out the turbo wasn't even really necessary. Then I went and got it a big wing. Sometimes I wish this game had some small wings, because I really hated myself for winging my M3, my elise, my mr2, my impreza, etc. All but the elise look like doo now. Either way, the downforce was necessary.

I don't remember my exact settings but I know that 22 front and 23 back was what I used for the downforce. Part of the fun is getting figuring out the settings you like yourself. I posted some settings in the tuning forum, but those were old, and I was messing around with them during the first 3 races of the tuning gran prix to get them exactly where i wanted.

Which brings me to my point (finally). The car hugs the road like it was it's own mother. It's like the god of Lotus is pressing his finger down on the roof of my carlton making sure it didn't let go. The only time I could get this car off the ground was taking the El Capitain jump at over 120mph. The car handled beautifully, even with my heavy handed attempts at manipulating the analog stick. I could stop the car in a heartbeat, it never slid out during heavy braking. Out of all the cars I drove, the only car that held the road better was the AMG 190 evo touring car, and that has some ridiculous downforce, something like 38 56. Granted, there is a horde of race car prizes in my garage I have yet to drive and compare it to.

Either way the car blew all my expectations in the handling department, and ended up trivializing the Tuning gran prix anyway. My B-spec driver, however, doesn't like it at all, and for that I want to kill him.
 
ok i maybe was a bit harsh about the handling (i will start to learn about tweaking!!)

but, i do think its a dog, aesthetically!! it is but a vauxhall cavalier (the carlton was just a slightly posher version hehe)

thx for your comments tho (apart from the plonker who called someone a nerd!!)

Gord
 
ok i'm sorry, its a lovely car!!

actually, i'm redoing this series with the carlton.... this time with stage 1 turbo (460 bhp)

and

i really like it now!!! very smooth and holds the road perfectly!! no wheel spin now!! sounds good too

i'm up against a tvr tuscan speed 6, 2 esprits (350 & V8) and 2 aston martins (vantage and db9)

won the 1st race 4.6 secs ahead

and i'm really enjoying driving this carlton.... so i take back ALL i said before

so.......... SORRY!!!! ;)

Gord
 
ok finished it!!

this is what my little write up should have been!!

set up: sports exhaust, SM tyres, sports intercooler, wing (15F, 20R), stage 1 turbo 460 bhp used on 1st race only (took turbo off for races 2-5, 440 bhp), no NOS

i qualified pole in every race

race 1: won by 4.6 secs, 41 a spec pts
2: 1.6 secs, 64 pts (fuji has a long straight, so got caught up a lot)
3: 12.0 secs, 64 pts (i love el capitan!!)
4: 9.3 secs, 64 pts (i love infineon!!)
5: 3.2 secs, 64 pts (long straight at midway)

the more i race the carlton, the more i like it!!

Gord
 
just redid el capitan

setup: std exhaust, engine chip (forgot to mention this b4), SM tyres, no turbine, no intercooler, wing left on, 1.5 lsd removed, no NOS

won by 7.4 secs, very easy 94 a spec pts (jag xj220 was second)

how come u cant qualify on the individual races (as opposed to doing it in the series?)

ok going back to bed now LOL, seems hardly worth it as its 6am!! (i couldnt sleep though)

Gord
 
I ran the British GT championship with the Carlton simply for the amusement value of pitting a sedan against a field full of purebred sports cars. Mine had full driveline/suspension/brake mods and the rigidity refresher (since it was a used car), and the only power mod I added was a racing chip, so I had just under 400HP. Ran the series on S2 tires and tweaked the suspension to reduce the understeer. The car handled pretty well; it was mostly neutral with a bit of oversteer if you threw it into a corner too hard. It did get a little unstable on a couple of the bumpier sections of El Capitan, and did a wicked 360 once after brushing an outside curb in the sweepers during practice at Grand Valley (it came around so fast I didn't even have time to let off the gas before it was facing the right direction again, so I only lost a second or two on that lap. I stayed the hell away from that curb from then on, though... :scared: ), but overall it was pretty smooth. As usual, I was much slower than the AI on the straights, but faster through the corners. I finished a close and very wild second at Grand Valley (came across the line sideways and sandwiched between the leader and third place), squeezed out a win at Fuji through some crazy mirror driving, and won handily at El Capitan. At Sears Point, I was heading for a fourth place finish, but on the last lap the third place car went wide off the first uphill section and then the second-place car sort of forgot to brake at the carousel, so I was able to snag another second-place finish. At this point, thanks to some shuffling in the AI finishing orders, I had a ten-point lead, so the championship was mine, which was a good thing, since I finished out the series with a fifth at Midfield after I got a little over-enthusiastic trying to block the fifth-place car coming to the line and once again slid across the line sideways between two AI cars. :D

Overall, it was a blast, and quite challenging (200 A-spec points for each race). I'll probably go back and see if I can take Grand Valley with my Carlton in the current configuration. I should have won it the first time, but I blew my exit on the tunnel turn on the last lap and the Lotus Espirit got by me. I was able to get back by him in the next turn, but he was too close coming to the last turn and I had to block him before the corner, which screwed up my entry and ended up allowing him to slip by anyway. I'll have to add some horsepower to it for Midfield, though, as I was badly outclassed and there aren't enough slow corners to make up for the high-speed straight sections.
 
nice write up LordD!! keep it up!!

I think i'll have a go with a stock carlton, few tweaks here and there!! (i made the classic mistake of modding b4 really trying the car out).

I have found that MANY cars are worse after modding (incl full race spec cars).... its an easy mistake to make, one i try not to make anymore...

thanx
 
Got a bit bored reading, but

Phil McCavity
its a lovely black color, but my garage says its imperial green metallic (i'm gonna go see the optician tomorrow hehe)
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All but the silver Lotus Carlton in the real world are Imperial Green Metallic. It looks black, until you get close (or it's really sunny). That's how to spot a replica - replicas are usually black.
 

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