We joke about the official car of Jalopnik being a brown rear-wheel-drive manual turbodiesel wagon Miata, but if you have one of those things (a turbodiesel), these Finns plan on showing you how to make it faster.
Black Smoke Racing is a drift team out of Finland who races bonkers turbodiesel Mercedes cars like this:
Naturally, people have turned to Black Smoke with questions about how to make their own turbodiesel daily drivers faster, so in response, Black Smoke is making a five-week video series on a streetable turbodiesel Merc build.
Already, they've run into common issues that most build videos like to gloss over. First, they bought the wrong car. I've even done this with the smelly late 944 shell that wasn't going to work easily with the early 944 parts from my wrecked racecar. Oops.
Black Smoke Racing discovered that the first car they picked up was registered as a low-emissions car, so modifying it would cancel out any ability to register it for street use. Also oops.
If you're going to build a car, you have to make sure to buy what something that fits what you need to build in the first place. Research these things first.
They also ran into a part that could only be loosened with my favorite tool of all time: a hammer. Hahahahaha.
There's no sugar-coating of this build for the camera: parts get stuck, people take breaks to curse out the car, and rods come mixed in a big box-o'-confusion. It's realistic, it's neatly subtitled in English, and it's perfect.
Part two is already live, so if you're curious about the realities of making your own brown manual turbodiesel wagon more fun to drive, stay tuned:
(H/T Antti Kautonen)