Baguette for Starter
“The rusty arches and three flaking rattle can jobs tipped the scales of a seemingly achievable re-build too far.”
‘Ten-Six’ or ‘One Oh Six’, whichever way you pronounce the popular French hatchbacks name, it conjures up images of angrily driven small hatchbacks, capitalizing on every bit of available friction circle like a panic buyer in the toilet roll isle when Boris appears on the 6pm News. Before you associate this blog with Burberry and hooped ear rings however, this particular 106 is a little different. Although entirely built to explore the limits of it’s given friction circles, it won’t be exploring them outside the local McDonalds, but instead on the gravel roads of England and Wales in the 2021 MRF Tyres BTRDA forest rally championship.
Tyrotek are not particular advocates of French machinery, but our motorsport journey began in a humble baby blue Peugeot 106 GTI that we’d sort of fallen in love with. However the car’s bodyshell bears scars from a hard life; a crumpled floor being the main one along with bent sump guard mounts and warped rear cross members all from different accidents, meaning the rusty arches and three flaking rattle can jobs tipped the scales of a seemingly achievable re-build too far. Que Project TenSix…
All that was critical to find for this build was a straight, rot free body shell, which as any purveyor of lift-off over steering hatchbacks will tell you it is in-fact easier to find a needle in a haystack. However a nice old man from Birmingham prevailed with a not so bad example of a 106 1.1 Independence that we don’t think had ever so much as been looked at the wrong way. With only minor rust repairs to carry out the team set to work stripping the car to it’s bare shell. As very little of the components on this car would be used for the eventual build, parts flew into the scrap bin quicker than influencers into Dubai over lockdown. The front passenger seat belt anchor not wanting to leave the car without a fight and the incurred smashed window is another story…
Once disassembled, the bodyshell was ready to go under the angle grinder for a little more than a nip & tuck… If you’ve read Put A Pug On A Spit, the bodyshell being upside down won’t be a surprise. Initially the underside of the car did not look so bad, however once the factory under-seal was removed (days of work) using twisted wire brushes on the angle grinder, it turned out the damp orange plague had infected a lot of the underside of the car; Inner wings, rear cross members, tow brackets, floor pan etc, so there was enough for our surgeons to be getting on with to return the bodyshell to full factory health before the modifications begin…
